Understanding art takes more than just knowing different styles of art. To know and understand art you have to unlearn everything you know about art because what you know as "art" is through someone's eyes (the artist). To unlearn art is to see art through your own eyes. Most of us know how to learn but it's only a few that know how to unlearn. Art represents freedom but it's impossible to understand this if you cannot unlearn everything that you consider to be art.
NB: Different types of species cannot view the world in the same way but they see the same thing.
Similar to seeing beauty, when you learn art you will know where it is...unlearn art and you will see it everywhere.

             why should you unlearn?

Everyone has idols and that's beneficial when it comes to inspiration and motivation. Don't you ever wonder why those idols dropped their then idols after they found their own style? The importance of knowing what art is will make the all the difference in the success of your end product.
The best way to explain this is to view art at as you would view water.
Let's state a few things that water can achieve.

• water can turn to ice
• water can be a gas
• water can run turbines
• water can be a coolant
• water can be a catalyst
• water can purify
• water can clean
• water can bread sports
• water can be a silent
• water can be loud
• water can be strong
• water can be weak
• water can give life
• water can ****


Let's be honest that's just learning the capabilities of water but if we had to know what it truly is then we have to consider it's basic and natural form...the liquid phase. In a nutshell it's just water. LIKE WATER, ART IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ANYTHING IN EVERYTHING.
        
          Art can be:

• angry
• happy
• sad
• argumentative
• accurate
• inaccurate
• abstract
• confusing
• personal
• futuristic
• simple
• complex
• subjective
• life saving
• mystical
• obvious
• technical
• obnoxious
• judgmental
• destructive
• depressive
• persuasive
• violent
• seductive
• EVIL
• cold
• warm
• rebellious
• brave
• an obsession
• a delusion
• cunning
• nostalgia
• deceptive

Hence why ART IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ANYTHING IN EVERYTHING.

        Attainable art

Art that is easily relatable to is attainable art, this is the type of art that focuses on what art can be.
The feel and texture of this art is very personal, so this art is solely based on what you as an artist think of art.
This type of art has limits.

        
       un-attainable art

Art with no boundaries, no fear and no doubt. It's not personal it's just the sheer appreciation of art. this type of art is created by those artist that think with their hearts.
This art is unattainable, it can't be possessed despite the concepts its been laid on, it's the highest form of art.
Unattainable art teaches us that the best craftsmen and artists have appreciated not just their own craft but art as a whole.
We appreciate art, art appreciates creativity, creativity appreciates detail, detail appreciates patience, patience invites serenity.
This Art serves as a uniform tool for realization, " I never thought this object or place could be seen in such a great way".
This art is what we call a masterpiece. Appreciation of art is serenity seen through many forms, but what is appreciation without any element of joy?. You can only have joy when you appreciate life.
Anyone can ****** happiness from another but joy can't be taken because if you appreciate life, you have the best gift in the world...TRUE HOPE.
when water is at serenity you can feel it breathing in the midst of silence.
To appreciate life without being alive is stupidity!

recently
I got a little older,
learned a lesson or two,
like how loving someone
could never be as poetic
as I wanted it to.
like how nothing
would ever be as poetic
as I wanted it to.
how can I accept
that the miracle of love
isn’t really a miracle at all?
how can I wrap myself
in someone’s arms
when I know
that there isn’t any sort
of poetic loving involved?
how do I unlearn
the romantic thoughts
that taught me
about the fireworks,
the butterflies,
and the fluttering fingers
in the dark.
and accept that
maybe kissing
won’t be as spiritual as I thought.
maybe it’s really just a mouth on mine.
how do I unlearn my innocent heart
who lulled me into a false sense of hope
for a lover who would call
the way my body moves
art.
a lover who would feel
the poetry
in every word
I spoke in the dark.

1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and
vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the
earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
increase, always ***,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of
life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not
my soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

Welcome is every ***** and attribute of me, and of any man hearty
and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
less familiar than the rest.

I am satisfied - I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the
night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy
tread,
Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with
their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my
eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is
ahead?

4
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and
city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old
and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss
or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,
the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is *****, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

5
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to
you,
And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not
even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over
upon me,
And parted the shirt from my *****-bone, and plunged your tongue
to my bare-stript heart,
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my
feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass
all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women
my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap’d stones, elder, mullein and
poke-****.

6
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see
and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the ******* of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out
of their mothers’ laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for
nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and
women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken
soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

7
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know
it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and
am not contain’d between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and
fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
For me those that have been boys and that love women,
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the
mothers of mothers,
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children.

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be
shaken away.

8
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies
with my hand.

The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.

The suicide sprawls on the ****** floor of the bedroom,
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol
has fallen.

The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of
the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the
clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-*****,
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs,
The flap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside borne to the
hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his
passage to the centre of the crowd,
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
What groans of over-fed or half-starv’d who fall sunstruck or in
fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and
give birth to babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls
restrain’d by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances,
rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of them-I come and I depart.

9
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow.

I am there, I help, I came stretch’d atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.

10
Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-****’d game,
Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves with my dog and gun by my
side.

The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle
and scud,
My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from
the deck.

The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,
I tuck’d my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time;
You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.

I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west,
the bride was a red girl,
Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking,
they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets
hanging from their shoulders,
On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his
luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride
by the hand,
She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks
descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to her
feet.

The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and
weak,
And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d
feet,
And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some
coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting piasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north,
I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.

11
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth
bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their
long hair,
Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending
arch,
They do not think whom they ***** with spray.

12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife
at the stall in the market,
I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down.

Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat in
the fire.

From the cinder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements,
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,
Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure,
They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

13
The ***** holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags
underneath on its tied-over chain,
The ***** that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and
tall he stands pois’d on one leg on the string-piece,
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over
his hip-band,
His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat
away from his forehead,
The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of
his polish’d and perfect limbs.

I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not stop
there,
I go with the team also.

In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as
forward sluing,
To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object missing,
Absorbing all to myself and for this song.

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what
is that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and
day-long ramble,
They rise together, they slowly circle around.

I believe in those wing’d purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,
And consider green and violet and the tufted crown i

When you left,
I had to unlearn the way your palms would tickle my spine, the way your gentle kisses felt upon my neck.

I had to unlearn your voice and the way you used to tell me you loved me.
I had to unlearn your green eyes, your freckles, the sound of your laugh.

And oh god, how badly I wanted to hold on.

Its funny how I could so easily unlearn the hurt you caused me, yet I can't seem to shake the memory of your love away.

If there is anything that I have learnt it's that the hardest thing I will ever have to learn is how to unlearn you

What makes you feel the most beautiful?
  ->doing whatever the fu€k I want
edit 1: I usually thought this way, but now I would say when I’m worshipping or praying
edit 2: I would add it is when I am completely vulnerable. It is a different kind of beauty. One that is emotionally strong
(usually a person will say when they look a certain way which is sad to an extent because it reflects the way in which they associate beauty immediately with an external reflection; however, most people think this way)

2. Who do you love the most in your life?

3. Who has shown you and made you feel the most loved?
—> I had a 11 year old ask me this once

4. What would you do during the summers as a kid?
—> it can reflect the socioeconomic background one comes from

5. Do you think you’re an aesthetically  beautiful person?
—> this is quite interesting, bc if a good looking person says yes, then they’re proud and stuck up; if they say no, then they’re obnoxiously oblivious and seeking attention; if a not so good looking person says yes, then they are praised for their confidence; if they say no, then they are pitied and encouraged, the best answer is to give an answer back: do you believe that everyone should feel aesthetically beautiful?

6. Do you have any siblings? If so, how many brothers and sisters, and are you the oldest or youngest?
—> learning about birthing order can be huge! Oldest tend to be protective, responsible, mature at a very young age, selfless, and carry more of a silent burden and stress, introduction to adulthood is rather quick. Middle child is often overlooked and will seek a sense of family/community elsewhere with friend groups and such; they feel like their thoughts/existence goes unseen by the ones that are supposed to care the most youngest tend to seek the approval of others especially of those older than them, outgoing, irresponsible, and babied. They can have a harder time managing task without it being done for them by others.

7. When we fall asleep, where do you think we go?

8. What is a thought that has kept you up at night?

9. What was the most humbling moment you’ve had in your life?

10. What is a piece of advice that you still hold today that transcends time?

11. What’s a favorite quote of yours?
-> the unexamined life is a life not worth living; don’t take yourself too seriously; come back home to yourself and choose to show up authentically; growth is a dance not a light switch; Harriet Tubman- I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed  a thousand more of only they knew they were slaves.

12. Who has impacted your life the most? How and why?

13. What is an overlooked or under appreciated strength that you have?
—> honesty, forgiveness

14. How do you give love? How do you receive it?
—> 5 love languages: words of affirmations, physical touch, acts of service, quality time, gifts

15. How do you communicate when in repairs after a rupture has occurred?
—> discuss as soon as possible, take a five minute break, wait a few days, words, touch, gifts, silence, etc. so you never repair after a disagreement?

16. Do you enjoy the late hours of the night or the early hours of the morning?

17. What’s your favorite type of weather?

18. Do you prefer exploring and staying in the gray, or the black and white?

19. Of you could study anything what would it be?

20. What are ways that you work on your emotional intelligence and character?

21. What type of communicator are you?
—> words, touch, actions, silent, loud, stoic, expressive, curt, bombastic, blunt, passive, etc.

22. Would you say you have a better face or body?

23. What is a moment where you felt a supernatural appreciation for the earth due to the view you saw?

24. How do you handle seasons? The ends and beginnings of them?
-> journal, reflect, avoid, acknowledge, cry, run backwards, move forwards, etc.

25. What book had a huge effect on you? What was it about the book?
-> all the bright places, Fahrenheit 451, the curse of the good girl, it ends with us, great gatsby, the voice of archer, etc.

26. What is the worst thing you can take from another person?
-> their time

27. What’s the greatest act of love (that you can do for another) ?
-> to die for another since the greatest fear is death

28. What is something that brings you peace that not many people do or notice?

29. What is the worst form of loneliness?
-> when you are uncomfortable with yourself

30. When do you feel the most vulnerable?
-> sleeping, expressing emotions, sick, crying, etc.

31. How do you handle seasons? The end and beginning of them?

32. Liquid or bar soap?

33. Have you ever closed your eyes, plugged your ears, and listen to the noise that comes when you let the water from a shower head pour over your skull

34. What is the most beautiful sound you have ever heard?

35. Do you think your parents are soulmates, or do you question their love for each other?  

36. What are important qualities to have in any relationship (platonic, romantic, etc.)?
-> trust, love, loyalty, respect, empathy, compassion, boundaries, autonomy, differences, effective communication, etc.

37. What are qualities that you look for in a romantic partner?
-> thoughtfulness, observant, confidence, wisdom, romantic, humorous, self-driven, self-discipline, humility, grace, etc.

38. How do you know that your (insert name/ relationship) loves you?

39. Would you rather be hated or alone?
-> interesting philosophical question in regards to being hated would mean that there is a recognition of your existence as opposed to being alone

40. How did you learn to ride the bike? Ice Scate? Snowboard?

41. When was the last time you felt rejected? By who? For what?

42. When was the last time you cried?

43. What has a kid said to you that has made you stop and reflect?

44. Which is a worse fear: the fear of dying or the fear of not being worthy of love
-> Jordan Peterson claims that the greatest fear that humans have is not death because then how would we explain suicide...the fear of death is a subcategory for the greatest fear which he believes to be the complexity issue (people **** themselves not because they want to die but because their life has become too complex for them to handle emotionally and/or physically)

45. What is the most destructive thing a person can do to themselves?
-> to deny themselves; to place the responsibilities of loving and accepting themselves onto others such as lovers or family members; to believe they are not worthy to be loved

46. What is something you want to experience/feel in a relationship
-> unconditional love; lol I have a while poke dedicated to experiences

47. Tell me about a dream that you have had multiple times

48. What do you like most about yourself?
-> my mind/thinking process; understanding, and open to conversation

49. Would you be friends with yourself

50. What is the worst thing you have done or said to another person? How old were you?

51. Why do you choose to wake up and participate in society?

52. What makes a woman or man their gender? Their body/attitude/characteristics?

53. Would you let your child date someone that has the character of you?

54. What makes you special? Since the beliefs you hold and the personality traits that you have aren’t exclusive to you?
-> it’s the combination and ratio that makes us unique

55. when was the last time anyone ever told you how important you are?

56. what are things you do when you need to feel nurtures?
->hot bath, foot rub, curling up in a comfy chair with a comforter and a good book, or making a *** of soup or a nourishing hot drink

57. what are ways that you neglect your physical and emotional well-being?

58. where in your life are you not protecting what is precious in you?

59. what adjectives describe your relationship with your mother? do you like the closeness or is it uncomfortable in some ways and hard to fully accept?

60. What do you do when you cry? do you try to stop it, cover your eyes, in the dark, into a pillow, silent, loud, sooth your body?

61. What was something that someone said to you that made you feel seen for the first time in a long time? what is something that touched you heart?
-> you are do brave, you have a courageous heart, you are a natural teacher and psychologist, you lean towards healing, you do not realize how much you impact other people's lives

62. what is a go to song that you could listen to at any moment in your life?

63. What do you do when you feel lonely?

64. What is something that puts a smile on your face?

65. What smell brings you joy?

66. would you rather get caught or catch your parents?

67. what is one of the biggest lies you have told yourself?
-> you are unworthy of love

68. what is a memory that reminds you of the beauty in life?

69. what is your favorite word to pronounce?
-> tantalizing, satiate, revere

70. what stereotype do you think people put you in when they see you?
-> pretty, (not super smart) blonde

71. what are things about you would shock other people?
-> first generation. youngest of five, 4.0 student, write poetry, love to read, not active on social media, don't like taking pictures, never been kissed, played the violin and cello, struggled with insecurity

72. tell me the accomplishments that you might be hesitant to share bluntly in fear that it comes off as being a show off?
-4.0 since sixth grade to nursing school in college, won a poetry competition in senior year of high school, got a full ride to UW Seattle and declined, won best dressed in high school, squatted 225lbs, muscular body, sang in a few songs (good at singing)

73. how do you interact with others when they are invading your personal space?
-> don't do anything, interrupt and tell them to move, slowly do something on your own without saying anything to them

74. what do you do and how do you feel when someone cries next to you?
-> hug/touch them, talk to them, remain silent, get stiff and uncomfortable, try to get them to stop crying, walk away

75. how do you regulate your emotions when they are out of homeostasis?
-> don't know how to, take deep breaths, walk away from the situation so the stimulus/source is not in front of me, cry

76. name as many emotions as you can
-> reflects their ability to accurately label their emotional experiences and can possibly be a marker/indicator for their emotional intelligence/maturity

77. how do you feel about death, do you talk about death, do you see others shut down or open up when you express this topic?
-> isn't it ironic how death is an inevitable event yet so many humans are uncomfortable with talking about it. I believe that it interrupts the natural grieving process. I talk about death with my dad and he is more open with talking to me about when he passes; my mom gets uncomfortable and gets upset and tries to switch the topic.

78. would you rather eat any form of noodles or burgers for the rest of your life?

79. when was the last time you sat in silence and was comfortable with it (excluding before you fall asleep)?

80. when was the last time you had a conversation with yourself about something deep? what was it about?

81. what is a revelation in your life that made you cry?
->only God can provide me with unconditional love; no one else can

82. what do you think is the root of all fears? what do you think can remove them?
->ignorance; distraction/knowledge -> unconditional love

83. What is the most unique response you’ve received when you’ve asked someone how they are doing?
-> still breathing

84. Do you think humans are easy to love?
-> I don’t think they are easy; it is complex just like they are

85. When was the last time you read a book? What was the title called? what was it about? Why did you read it?
-> the emotionally absent mother by Jasmin Lee Cori

86. If you’re comfortable with sharing, talk to me about the life of someone that has passed away? What were they like? How did they make you feel? Who were they to you? How did you cope when you realized they passed away?

87. Who are addicts? What do you need to do to be one? Do you think everyone is an addict to some extent? Why do you think people become addicts?
-> whenever faced with such questions it is imperative that we must ask ourselves the question of why! Yes, I believe all of us are addicts to dopamine; our brain is wired that way. But when we think of addicts, we forgot to ask the question of why they are addicts. Life became too difficult to manage and the body found a way to stimulate the mind in such a manner that it either numbed the pain or provide sensation to a chronic state of numbness

88. Other than the lips, where do you like to be kissed the most?
-> forehead, cheek, behind the ear, neck, top of head, hand, nose, shoulder, chest, back, collarbone

89. What type of kiss do you enjoy the most?
-> slow, fast, French, peck, open mouthed, short, long, sloppy, hungry, passionate, affectionate, sweet, etc.

90. it is easy to agree with the statement that dehumanization is not okay, but is it more gray than we think? is there a degree of dehumanization that is okay or needed? if so, what is that degree? also, do you think we commit acts of dehumanization regularly? if so, when and what are these instances?
-> i believe that as humans we have a tendency of wanting to see our light and ignore the aspects of ourselves that are casted in that shadow. to have a light is to also have a shadow; i believe that we dehumanize almost every time we meet someone by limiting their mystery to small snipits of who they really are; also, sometimes it is very difficult to handle and hold such emotional space that our minds need to shut off and dehumanize for our own sake of well-being

91. are soul mates meant to be with each other?
-> A soulmate is a person with whom one has a feeling of deep or natural affinity. This may involve similarity, love, romance, platonic relationships, comfort, intimacy, sexuality, ****** activity, spirituality, compatibility and trust

92. what are ways that you can take a break from reality?
-> sleep, reading, gaming, showering

93. do you have people in your life where their presence is enough? no conversation is necessary, just each other's presence is comforting enough.
->celesa, kristina, michelle, marta,

94. what is a memory you like to relive time to time?
->dancing with celesa at the bistro to adore you; trinity; late night phone calls with close friends

95. how would you describe your relationship using 5 adjectives or phrases with your best friend, sibling (if you have one), and care giver?
-> "If you love yourself, you love others. If you hate yourself, you hate others. Because in relationship with others … the other is nothing but a mirror." - Anonymous

96. how would you describe yourself using 10 adjectives?
-“I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best." I like this quote because it acknowledges the negatives of who we all are. we aren't all only happy, funny, bubbly, hard-working, etc. we are also grumpy, boring, rude, and lazy. we are a combination of every adjective out there; it just depends on how aware we are of our expressions of these adjectives. So, notice the kind of adjective the person uses when they respond and also note the context and circumstance of your relation to them.

97. do you prefer a hot drink on a cold day or a cold drink on a hot day?

98. if you could be famous would you? famous for writing, acting, food, music, sport, YouTube etc.
-> for me personally it depends on the exposure i get. if i get a lot of focus on myself then no (music, acting, etc.) but if my work gets more focus than i do and i can still live a "normal" life then yes (writing, food, etc).

99. which musicians or artists do you think deserve more recognition?
-> emotional oranges, Justice Der, cigarettes after ***, the 1975, pink sweat$, A. Chal

100. what is one of the most thought-provoking questions or statements you have ever heard?
-> "not all of us can afford to be romantic" - Pride and Prejudice;
"when will it be enough; how much more do you need to finally be happy"- My dad; "do you believe that everyone deserves to look and find themselves to be aesthetically beautiful" -My brother

101. Favorite piece of clothing?
-> yuriy’s wedding: the dress I had, red socks, fuzzy sweater

102. What’s your full name?

103. What’s the weirdest saying an old person has said?
-> don’t go spending your money in a wooden nickel

104. What age would you consider a person to be old?

105. Do you believe that life requires s purpose?

106. What is your purpose?

107. What is one of your biggest fears that you believed in (as a child, adult, etc)?
-> that I was unlovable at some point in my life

108. When you are in an emotional emergency, do you have someone you can call? If so, who is it and why?
-> I don’t really...I try to stick through it...weird since I have had people tell me that I could call them but I still don’t feel comfortable to talk to them...

109. Do you have relationships where you felt valued, a sense of belonging, calm, accepted?

110. What is your earliest memory of feeling left out?
-> the social pain overlap theory (SPOT) describes the overlap between the pain of being physically hurt and the pain of being left out. In our bodies, there is literally no distinction between the two.

111. If you could only have one for the rest of your life, would you choose to keep limes or lemons?

112. Have you ever experienced the relational paradox? If so, with whom?
->  when you’re convinced that your friends won’t tolerate who you really are so you decided the best way to be excepted is to leave a part of yourself out of those relationships; By hiding yourself you may preserve the friendship but at the cost of feeling that you don’t legitimately belong but if your friends can see who you truly are they would cut you loose

113. Have you ever done a relational mindfulness exercise?
-> set a timer for 10 minutes, and then stare into each other’s eyes silently. It should sync your cardiac systems as well as your respiratory systems. Hold each other’s pulses to identify; I find it weird how we get stared at lovingly when we are babies and then that goes away as well get older...

114. What is a secret that you have kept from your partner, family, or closest friends that you believe if they found out they would reject you?

115. Do you have a person in your life that can be categorized as “the one that got away”? Someone you either dated or never dated?

116. Is there someone in your life that you don’t see anymore that you would like to have a conversation with? Dead and/or alive.

117. Sunset or sunrise?

118. Do you want children? What is your opinion on men who don’t want children; what is your opinion on women who don’t want children?

119. Have you ever felt forced to do something that you didn’t want to do or say? Like give a handshake, hug, take a picture, have a conversation, give a number, compliment someone, disclose personal information, go on a date, say I love you?
-> there’s a difference between not wanting to do something and feeling forced to do something, and I find it interesting that we all do things that we feel are forced upon us when no one is directly stating that we have to do it; it’s like an invisible force

120. what is something that another person did that made you uncomfortable but you never addressed it?
-> sing terribly while they are genuinely trying, get physically close to me, compliment me in a creepy way, talk in a movie theater

121. What is a pet peeve of yours?
-> leaving garbage on a table after you eat (not cleaning up after yourself), having poor etiquette with servers or cashiers, saying “mom” instead of “my mom” if I don’t share the same mother as them (missing the possessive pronoun before a parent).

122. Who is someone that you find attractive that is the same *** as you?
-> Arbby, Irina, Jessica, Sara, Valentina

123. What is the most sweet/****** compliment you have given to someone?

124. What is the biggest plot twist you have ever seen in a movie or book?

125. When did you  feel the most loved (in your entire life, this week, by me)?

126. what is something I have said that you have always remembered?

127. Blue or red Gatorade?

128. Star gazing or sunset picnic?

129. What is something that is underrated?
-> our bodies (specifically our our hands, eyes), stars, cologne/perfume

130. have you ever tried to impress the other? If so, for what reason and when?

131. Which do you prefer: breakfast, lunch, or dinner for the rest of your life?

132. Are you missing someone right now? Do you think they miss you?

133. What was the happiest meme out you have had this year?
-> dancing with Celesa at trinity, at the apartment, after hours at the bistro, French dip at lost like with Celesa, holding Lorenzo, seeing a birth and colostrum, making my first song and listening to it for the first time, board game with Hayden, D.E.A. Hat guy, Fourth of July with kristina -> ride back with questions, eagles falls, yuriy’s wedding and gelato boy, euphoria makeup with Bella, painting with Michelle at green lake, reading books

134. where were you born?

135. how many states/countries have you visited?

136. what color would you use to describe your life

137. would you say it is better or worse to listen to sad music when you are sad?

138. what is the #1 factor that predestines people for failed relationships?
-> no examples of healthy relationships

139. what is the weirdest ice cream flavor you have ever tried?
->black licorice, peppercorn/caramel/goat cheese

140. What’s the most exciting dream you have ever had?

141. What’s the most peaceful dream you have ever had?

142. What’s the most terrifying dream you have ever had?

143. Who is the most misunderstood person you know?
-> Mark; he wasn’t well liked, but I remember thinking that the was just misunderstood...

144. Who in your life are you misunderstood by?
-> my mom

145. Do you prefer handshakes or hugs?

146. Do you prefer movie nights or dinner dates?

147. When was the last time you read a paper book for pleasure?

148. What is a comment that someone said to you that you were honestly shocked by? Like, you couldn’t believe it came from their mouth?
-> when I was in sixth grade and my friend’s mom said, “aren’t you jealous of [her daughter/my best friend’s name] ****”?; “do you even know what wings are”?

149. As a kid in elementary school, where did you play during recess? Tetherball, four-square, hopscotch, jump rope, soccer, basketball, slide, monkey bars, swings, sandpit, etc?

150. What otter pop flavor was your favorite?
-> the pink one

151. When you brush your teeth, are you messy or clean? Meaning, does the toothpaste get outside of your mouth at all?

152. What do you remember about elementary school in terms of field trips, punishments, recess, fun run, day of activities, lunch food, movie nights, fundraisers, assemblies, and reading points?

153. what do you remember about middle school in terms of the change from elementary school with no recess, classes, $ex ed, lockers, assemblies, P.E., lunch food?

154. what do you remember about high school in terms of the change from middle school, classes, assemblies, P.E., sports, lunch food, standard tests, dances, friends from your first year to your last year?

155. what do you think is a poet's aphrodisiac in the form of a person?
->intelligence, originality, mystery, intriguing personality

156. what is a bad habit that you know you should quit ( can be a substance, activity, or person)?

157. How often would you say you reflect on your life? with the mundane activities and the more impacting activities?

158. what's a song that you are replaying right now?
-> redbone x childish gambino by Jospeh Solomon

159. what is the most random food combo that you really enjoy?
->mashed potatoes/gravy with corn; hot dog with jelly

160. who is a person in your life that was the most mysterious to you?

161. would you say that you were shown healthy relationships throughout your childhood? in particular, your parents' relationship?

162. would you say that your family made you feel seen, heard, and understood? if not, would you say that you subconsciously expect this in your adult relationships? what have you done to unlearn this mentality?

163. would you say that you are always the one doing the caretaking in your relationships?

164. do you have a hard time listening to others?

165. do you act differently with men than with women?

166. do you get hurt easily and withdraw when there is conflict; what are you like during conflict?

167. what are you like when you don't get your way (aggressive, sad, quiet, loud, irritated, calm, unbothered, indifferent, annoyed, happy, frustrated)?

168. what are the molds for your ideas about how relationships are supposed to work?

169. what do you believe you're entitled to within a relationship (any/ friend/ romantic/ family)?

170. what was your closest experience with death?

171. do you prefer cauliflower or broccoli?

172.  what's the weirdest thing you have ever eaten?

173. what are your favorite tv shows or movies?
-> bridgerton, pride and prejudice, law abiding citizen,

174. what is the most controversial thing you have ever done?

175. what is the most controversial thing another person has done?

176. what is your superpower?
->there is no one on this planet that is quite like me

177. what do you believe is the purpose of a romantic relationship? Marriage?

178. do you think love is needed to marry someone? would you find yourself ever in a situation where you would marry someone that you did not love?

179. what is your weirdest talent? hobby? experience?

180. do you bring your phone with you when you go to the bathroom? if so, when was the last time that you went without your phone?

181. what is something that most people have done but will not admit to?
->eat a ******, smelling their **** out of curiosity, ma$turbate, blame a **** on someone else, etc.

182. do you believe that there should be aspects of yourself that no one else on this earth except yourself should ever know?

183. what's the weirdest conversation you've ever had with someone?

184. How old were you when you had your first kiss? Describe the situation? Who made the first move?

185. What is the spiciest thing you have ever eaten?

186. what is the most bitter thing you have ever eaten?
-> unripe pear!!

187. what is the most spontaneous thing you've ever done and/or said?
->eagles falls with kristina, lorenzo's birthday with selesa

188. how would you want a girl/boy to shoot their shot at you?

189. if you could be someone else for a day (someone you have met and know) who would it be?

190. if someone wasn't interested in you, how would you want them to rejected?

191. do you prefer buttered popcorn or the sweet kettle popcorn?

192. what is the rudest thing you've wanted to say but stopped yourself from saying?

193. what is the most genuine, heart-felt compliment you have received from someone?
-> you are courageous/brave; you are a natural psychologist and healer; you're my best friend, I can tell you anything

194. what is an experience you look forward to in life?
-> walking down the aisle and maintaining eye contact with my man the entire time until I have to hug my dad goodbye; my wedding night; going on vacations with just my husband; going to Jamaica; holding my baby in my arms for the first time; watching my husband play with our children on a beach as I sit under the shade; trying fruity cocktails on my 21st; going on my first date; my first kiss; moving into my house

195. what is a moment that you tend to relive in your mind?

196. what is something that you have learned to accept in life as you have gotten older?

197. who was your first crush? how old were you? what about them made you like them?
->ruslan at church; I was maybe four; he was really sweet to me and I thought he was cute; at yuriy's wedding, I saw him and told him about it which made him get really excited

198. what is something that you hate to eat? you've tried it and you know that you will try to avoid it at all costs.
->parsley, celery, beets, ginger

199. at what age would you say you lost your child-like innocence?

200. your turn. create a question!

201. how old were you when you found out that santa wasn't real? how did you handle it?

202. what is something that people hate, but still choose to participate in?
->beauty standards

203. what super power would you wish to have?
->time control

204. if you had the chance to have the superpower of mind control, would you accept it?

205. how would you decorate your ideal house?
-> different vibes for different rooms; monochromatic black room with lava lamps, white room with dark brown wood accents and lots of plants, pastel light pink with neon glass decorations

206. who is a person that had made you cry?

207. what is one of the most scariest thoughts you have had run through your mind?

208. what is one of the most sad thoughts you have had run through your mind?

209. do you believe you should have to pay to live on a planet you were born on?

210. what is a candy that you hate?

211. what is a song that you try to avoid because it is too personal?
-> apple bottom jeans

212. would you say that you are alive or merely living?

213. what is something that someone said to you that you have never forgotten?
-> you have a lot of knowledge, but you lack experience

214. what is an example of a person that you thought was good but turned out to be a genuinely bitter, horrible person?

215. When was the last time you felt truly understood by somebody? Who was it? What did they understand?

216. Can you think of someone in your life who understands you better than anyone else?

217. Is your relationship with yourself healthy or unhealthy?

218. Growing up, the relationships I primarily saw were healthy or unhealthy?

219. Do you attach guilt with growth?

220. Have you spent too much time today comparing yourself?

221. When did you feel the most trapped?

222.who do you feel most yourself around? Why?

223. what parts of yourself do you need to break up with?

224. what is your favorite conspiracy that you believe in right now?

225. do you prefer to work with people are are the same or opposite gender as you?

226. what was the most intense experience of $exual tension that you have had?

227. what activity do you do that makes you feel most at home/ yourself?

228. what was the most painful truth you have ever been told?

229. who is someone you will never forget even though you have only had one encounter with them?

230. when was the last time you felt adrenaline pumping through your veins due to excitement?

231. what about you feels easiest to love (physical and character)?

232. what about you feels hardest to love (physical and character)?

233. What kind of love feels more familiar to you -> peaceful or chaotic love?

234. to what extent to you feel your appearance is the most important aspect of who you are?

235. do you think being attractive is a privilege? are you nicer or meaner to people you find attractive?

236. what was the hardest thing that you forgave someone for?

237. how would you define forgiveness?

238. who have you farted the loudest or most often?

239. what is an embarrassing story of when you really needed to **** in class but struggled to hold it in?

240. what is something that made you blush really hard?

241. if you had the opportunity to be famous, would you choose to be?

242. what is the longest you have not dated someone (or was flirting or thinking with someone)? In other words, what is the longest you have been alone?

243. what separates us from God?
-> ignorance (spiritual) and death (physical) - Jordan Peterson

244. what is a message that everyone deserves to hear in life?
-> "you deserve someone who's going to work hard to find ways to care for you." You are worthy of unconditional love.

245. what is a difficulty in your life right now?

246. what is something you've always wanted to try but haven't yet?
->fall in love, go on a trip by myself, go to Europe with Itzhel, drink a mimosa at brunch in a sunny place

247. what are qualities that you really admire in people?
-> attentiveness, observant, thoughtful, thought-provoking, mysterious, charming, honest transparency, vulnerability, calm curiosity, humble confidence

248. what is one of the most important connections you can have in life?
->your relationship with yourself

249. what memory comes to mind when you think about the ocean/beach?

250. what memory comes to mind when you think about carnivals?

251. what memory comes to mind when you think about water balloon fights or snowball fights?

252. Do you think your parents have thought about killing themselves?

253. Do you think your best friend has thought about killing themselves?

254. How often do you think people have thought about harming or killing themselves.

255. Do you believe in the concept of marriage?

256. what is the worst advice you have ever received?

257. was there ever a time where you were vulnerable and regretted it? if you are comfortable with it, what was the situation?

258. if you could go to any concert, who would you go see?
-> chase atlantic, post malone, cigarettes after ***, ariana grande, the 1975

259. why do you think people protect their pain? what does that look like - to protect one's own pain?

260. what is an acoustic version of a song that sounds better than the studio version?
-> like a rockstar & what u call that & cassie - chase atlantic

261. what is an experience that you wish to never experience again?

262. how do you feel about silence? is its presence comforting?

263. have you taken any drugs? if so and you feel comfortable sharing, what are they?

264. what is advice you would give to your 15yo self and your 40yo self? (a much younger and older version of yourself?)
-> younger self: you are worthy to love; you are worth getting to know and understand; you will one day believe that you are enough and choose healing with a life filled with authenticity that will get challenged; you'll be more unconventional; your way of thinking will not be like most that are around you - this is okay and expected
older self: I hope you are happy and live a life that you chose and not one that you compromised on for the sake of other's happiness and comfortability; I hope you live authentically and continued the process of living actualized as Maslow would saw; I hope you married your best friend that is your match in his own unique way; i hope your communication is better and that your relationships are healthy and boundary enforced

265. if you knew you were going to interview God for thirty minutes and could ask him only one question, what would it be?
-> who am I?

266. what would you do if knew you could not fail?

267. how are you, really?

268. how would you behave if you were the best at what you do in the world?

269. are you finding your dream job or are you creating it?

270. if there was a solution to your anxiety, what would it look like?

271. why are you worth knowing?
-> well, you're sitting in this seat listening to me

272. when was the last time you did something for the first time?

273. how do you treat people who can do nothing for you?

274. do you stack the plates and clean up your table when at a restaurant?
->analyze SES and their behavior to working class

275. what or who lights you up?

276. what would your perfect day look like?

277. what is an underappreciated fruit and vegetable?

278. what is something that guys/girls are insecure of that guys/girls do not really care about?

279. tell me about a time where you threw up in public?

280. tell me something illegal that your family did?

281. what is a word that would always make you laugh whenever you heard or said it when you were a kid?

282. what is the first cuss word you started using often in your vocabulary?

283. if you could be one animal, what would it be?

284. what insect were you the most fascinated by as a kid?
->ladybugs, dragonflies

285. if you could blow one thing, what would it be?
->paint, slaughterhouse, firework stand

286. what emotions would you associate to every color in the rainbow including pink, brown, black, and white? If that is too much, if you could choose one color, what emotion would you assign to it?

287. what is the saddest thing that a person has ever said to you about themselves or their life?

288. if you could be any pair of shoes, what would it be?
->professional rock climber, work boot

289. would you consider yourself to be an addict?
-> I think we are all on a continuum and are all wired to be addicted to dopamine and love we just go about it different ways.

290. if you could have any dog in the world, what would it be and why?

291. if you had to describe love and what it feels like to a young person, what would you say? OR
if a kid asked you what love feels like, how would you answer them?
-> able to feel no judgment and feel free to be who you are without the fear of rejection

292. how would you define healing?

293. how would you know that you are healing or healed?

294. where in your life have you compromised and lived for someone else?

295. what is a thought or idea that scares you?

296. why do you think people protect their pain?

297. how would you like to be cared for when you are experiencing an emotional crisis?

298. what is something that you were told when you were a kid that you have never forgotten because it provoked you so much?

299. who is a friend in your life that you know you should stop the friendship with but you struggle to?

300. what is a motto that you would tell your kids that you have lived by?
->be the man/woman that you would want your daughter/son to marry one day

301. when was the last time anyone ever told you how important you are?

302. Who have you spoken the most genuine I love you to?

303. What social situation are you the most anxious of?

304. What is something that people would never think or associate with you that you’ve thought or done?
-> I love to binge on romance novels, I played the violin and cello, I’ve never been kissed/had a bf, I have a song on all platforms, I’ve had a 4.0 most of my life, I tend to write ****** poems, I was in a drill team for five years, I wasn’t born in America, I love country music

305. What is something you’d like to say to someone who has already passed away?
-> Robertson: I hope you’re proud of me in the way that I am; thank you for supporting me in more ways than one

306. What is something you’d like to say to someone who hurt you badly?
-> i deserved better than your projected insecurities, but I was too naïve to understand any better

307. If you were forced to only listen to three songs on replay during the deed for the rest of your life, what would it be?

308. Like all of us, we are replete with contradictions -> we are walking contradictions. What are yours?
-> a desire for intimacy and a fear of touch/commitment; a desire to be known and a fear of vulnerability

309. Do you think you ever turned a teacher on?

310. What is the greatest lesson that the other person has taught you?

311. if people could not take pictures, do you think they would still drive to the tulip festivals?

312. why do you think we met?

313. which is the hardest for you to say
(1) I love you
(2) I was wrong; I'm sorry
(3) Worcestershire sauce
(4) I need help
(5) I appreciate you

314. what is one of your favorite lines in a song?
-> hoodie on low cuz I stay focused yeah, hard to stay low when everybody notice
-> heart on your sleeve like you've never been loved; I don't feed her fears I feed her habits; type to make you f*ck 'till you finish
->said you needed this heart then you got it turns out that it wasn't what you wanted

315. Are you struggling with your mental health right now?

316. Are you afraid to admit the things that go on in your head?

317. Have you ever met a person that made you so nervous that you avoided them at all costs due to the way that they look?

318. Who is the most selfish person you know?

319. Who is the most selfless person you know?

320. How many Costco hotdogs could you eat in 45 minutes for a hotdog eating competition?

321. What do you put on your Costco hotdog?

322. What’s your favorite cereal brand?

323. Stargazing or sunset?

324. What is an underrated aspect of life that is mundane to most?
-> breathing, eyesight, touch

325. If you could only keep two out of the five senses, which ones would you choose? What if you could only keep one?
-> taste, touch, smell, eyesight, hearing

326. Would you consider yourself to be more black and white or gray in terms of your thinking?

327. What was your favorite kind of candy cane: the peppermint, chocolate, or fruity ones?

328. What’s an American tradition that you do not follow?
-> I'm not a huge fan of chocolate chip cookies, PB cups, peppermint candy canes

329. what do you love most about your family?

330. what is something you would like to change about your family?

331. what is a fashion trend that you think is overrated?

332. what is an aspect about people that you have only encountered a few times in your life?
->humble/ confident authenticity, thoughtfulness

333. what do you think is the ugliest trait one can have?

334. which is worse to be super insecure or to have an inflated ego?

335. would you call yourself a good person? how do you define good?

336. what is something that fascinates you that you think about time to time?
-> reality doesn't really exist; it's our perception of the stimuli in our life that we come to understand as our own reality which is only one side of the narrative. Also, people have conversations that are quite incompatible in the sense that their definitions of words and their life experiences impact how each person enters the conversation. It is like there are two conversations that are being shared and understood in the same space.

337. what is a job that you think is much more difficult to do/live with?
-> acting: how do you separate and keep hold of your authentic self and the characters you play if you can play them really well. Does life become your stage?

338. what is a movie or song that is about to release that you look forward to seeing/listening?

339. how do you feel about your inevitable mortality?

340. what do you think about graves? how do you think society has shaped or challenged your opinion of them?

341. what is a reason for why you cried?

342. when was the last time you laughed so hard you couldn't breath?
-> talking to Bella's family and Devin jumping into the conversation with his friend that his lactose intolerant when we were talking about birth control

343. what is the best vacation that you have had? what made it so special?

345. what is the greatest lesson a friend has taught you?

346. what is the greatest lesson a parent or adult has taught you?

347. what is the weirdest thing you have done with someone in public?

348. have you ever looked at someone while they're doing something like driving, laughing or eating and just smile because they mean so much to you? If so, who?

349. what do you think is the most influential relationship that you have that impacts all other ones that you have?
-> yourself or with your parent(s)/caregiver(s)
-> "never forget that the relationship you have with yourself sets the tone for the relationship you have with everyone else. If you want to work on your relationships, start working on yourself"

350. what was a phase of your life that you would go back to if you have the chance. why?

351. what is a warning that you wish you got before knowing me?

352. what is a question that you have wanted to ask someone but got too nervous to announce?

353. talk about a time where you needed toilet paper but it wasn't there. what did you do? were you in public or at home?

354. what is an instrument that you think is harder than it actually is?
-> the drums!! that is multiple rhythms to keep up with...

355. describe a time where you thought you were going to cry but tried really hard to keep your composure?

356. when you would cry as a kid, what would your parent(s) say? other adults? if they shamed or shut you down immediately, do you still do this to yourself today?

357. what is the craziest drug you have ever taken?

358. what is something you would miss if your home burned down?

359. if you could move anywhere, where would it be? would it be in the city or country?

360. what is knowledge that you wished you knew when you were younger?

361. what is the most expensive item you have bought that you regretted?

362. if you could hug anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would it be?

363. what is the most messed up thing you have seen another person do to another?

364. what do you tend to think about during the time where you are laying in bed and trying to fall asleep? where does your mind tend to go to?

365. what is an event in the future that you are looking forward to?

366. Is a hotdog a sandwich?

367. If you were diagnosed with Alzheimer's and you could remember only one memory, what would it be?

368. What aspect/version of yourself are you the most ashamed of?

369. What aspect/version of yourself are you the most proud of?

370. Is there someone in your life that you hide aspects of yourself from? Do you believe that if they knew all of you unfiltered that they wouldn’t accept you? is this true love?

371. Do you know how to swim? If so, how and where did you learn to?

372. What is a song that makes you cry/emotional? W

373. What song reminds you of another other person?

374. What is the name of a song you will not listen to again because it is too painful?

375. Who has emotionally hurt you the most in your life?

376. When was the last time someone told you that they loved you? How did it make you feel?

377. What did you dream of last night? If you do not remember any dream, then what was your most recent dream?

378. If you had to either eat and **** out of your mouth or *** which one would it be?

379. What's something a stranger said to you that you remember to this day?
-> I think that your body is perfect

380. What is a lesson that the earth has taught you?

381. What is a lesson that your body has taught you?

I’m memorizing every contours of your face,
Like a blind girl tracing her fingers on a braille,
I’m memorizing how your voice sounds
And how it tinkers when you laugh,
I’m commiting to memory every facet and feature of you
For I know our days won’t last
And I’m just that kind of girl
Who keeps on forgetting
her ex-lovers faces and names
So when that time comes
When our ways will part
I hope I’ll have enough memories of you
Tucked in my mind and my heart,
memories, I will never
unlearn.

My friend puking out her Christmas dinner like a little girl trying to scrub off that uncle’s touch who tells her she is his favorite kid.
For her dad fat shames her every day.


My friend’s parents sending her to therapy because they don’t get how she can like a boy as well as a girl. Or rather don’t try to, because calling it phase is so much easier than explaining to the neighbors how that is who their daughter is. They are oblivious to what it is like to live in a home where you are treated like a victim of your existence.


My friend needs help, a little attention and someone to talk to.
His family is ashamed, how they could have done better for him, how they’re responsible for the things inside his head and I still don’t know what depression does to him, his family doesn’t like to talk about it.
They’d rather consider him possessed because anything is better than people knowing that he needs therapy and love and care. “Their son can’t be suffering from mental illness, they’re a happy family.”


My friend tells me she’s turning into her mother, and her mother let me tell you, she’s fabulous and fierce for she has been through things harsher than a lover who never says,'I love you’ but wants you to be their ***** little secret and you love them a little too much to deny. My friend, she had an anxiety attack last night for she can’t go out with her guy friends, neither talk to a classmate for too long because her boyfriend might start ****-shaming her. I disapprove and tell her she is not turning into her mother but when I sit in their living room, and aunty brings me snacks while talking to me about life within these faint green walls of the house and what did I eat for breakfast. I ask her to go out sometimes because there are so many things out there that she’d be experiencing and creating, friendship, weather, languages, people, art, emotions. And smell some sunlight in the lush greens fields. She says she’s not allowed to, like a kid calling its mother, "Ma". Her husband loves his ***. And her helplessly hazardous heart, too drained to take ‘harlot’ for a word from an alcohol-soaked throat.
The same walls that once adored their wedding photographs now question their love.


My friend’s girlfriend telling him she loves him but they can’t be together because she’s doesn’t want to be seen with him in the streets. But she seeks his warmth in the winter and leaves right before spring. He loses a little bit of himself every time she does that. He blames himself for what love does to him.


The woman who wears a heavy heart to the bed, finds it difficult to put herself to sleep, holds her dog for a little too long. Whose husband refuses to try therapy.
For I can't margin in metaphors, the agony within the wives who haven't been touched for years.
And the woman who feels a little less human after every night her husband forces himself on her. Because she's, his wife. His. Possession not prized but objectified.
The wife whose husband refuses to wear a ******, she gulps down pain every morning with the pills.
Families of these women, who were taught to think that is how the society functions and who are unwilling to unlearn.      


My friend’s brother asking her to stop wearing that short skirt around guests. There's a hole in her heart every time she remembers the traces his hands left on that infertile body of the kid that looked just like her. He pretends like it never happened.

this is a poem about how you sleep,
how your body grew cold like a corpse in a mortuary.
how it felt wrong to reach out and touch you.
did you know that you turned away from me
every time i tried to face you?
did you do it on purpose?
maybe you were afraid i would be able to see
you were dreaming of her,
that i would read it on your face.
lines by your mouth like obituary,
like roadmap, her bedroom,
the destination, mine, a pitstop.
loving you was like attending a funeral service for myself
and sitting in the front row. no.
loving you was like watching you pick out a casket
and call it practice. ****.
i know how sensitive you are about death.
i know it still hurts.
i know how everything hurts.
i am sorry for just being another thing that hurts.
i think i'm afraid to let you forget that you used to want me.
like if i can somehow dig deep enough,
wound you into remembering me.
i keep weapons-grade nostalgia in my back pocket
for the days i can feel myself slipping from your consciousness.  
i was born with scar tissue where skin should've been.
but this isn't about me.
this is about the way you sleep
like you're waiting for someone to close the lid,
cover you in dirt, and read a psalm.
this is about the way i tried to sing your pieces back together,
and the way my voice gives out
when i read the things you write for anyone other than me.
lover, friend, stranger,
i just wanted to show you how to love your darker parts.
i never meant to become one.
i am so ******* selfish.
but i swear i am trying to unlearn the steps.
and you used to think my two left feet were charming.
i am out of time in more ways than one.
i keep stepping on your toes.
i can't seem to stop tripping you up,
hoping that you'll fall back into whatever this was.

- m.f.

Because i'd rather avoid you, delete you, ignore you
because the last thing I wanted to was to find myself in the middle of the night before a full day of MEChA activities and workshops writing you a ******* tragic melancholic pathetic love poem
which makes me angry and sad at the same time
talk about intersectionality

because it's hard to survive
and I want to live
and feel loved
and I feel you take me for granted
and in order to honor the love I have for you
I need to let you go
until I can love you as a friend

you taught me to love you without limits
and that's so hard to unlearn

because I learned to wait, to listen, to save, to not expect, to serve, to accept

because I refuse to go on and pretend this love doesn't exist
because I can't be your best friend
comadre, sister or whatever the ******* call it

because you make me feel little, ugly, betrayed, silenced, guilty, unwanted, dependent, anxious,

and because you always expect a reason from me
mientras como de tu plato hondo de soledad y silencio

because I want you to cry like I cried
feel what I felt
believe what I believed
know what I once thought I knew

because I need me whole
and you taught me to love me in fragments.

Because I love you, and love like that is so hard to unlearn. Any theories for that?

I am trying to unlearn,
I am unloading my bags,
Of all the karmic debt,
That I owe this form.

I have touched and felt,
Filled up a part of me,
With experiences that feel,
As light as nothingness ,
As heavy as this void.
Some lift my heart up,
Some burden me down,
Both clench my soul tight.

I am trying to be free,
Empty in my mind ,
Away from all I have ,
Accumulated matter ,
The years that have,
Tethered my spirit,
Bound into this skeletal form.

I am trying to unlearn,
Everything that makes me,
My thoughts and feelings,
Knowledge of the world.
Because when I try to look,
I get lost inside myself,
The labyrinths of my making.

“You’re the elephant in every room now. I used to think you were the monster under the bed, but you’re not supposed to fall in love with the monsters. Not even when they kiss you like they mean it. I’m lying down in a field of apologies for you, and they all sound the same. I’m sorry this felt like a flying through a windshield. I’m sorry I didn’t stay to clean up the mess. I’m sorry all we had to show for this was a crime scene love affair. I’m sorry you stopped touching me. You’re living in my head for now, and we treat each other better this time. On the bad days, I think I see you in the supermarket or strolling down the sidewalk or in a car speeding by, and then I realize for a second that it’s still about you. Even when it isn’t, it is. Even when I’m not thinking about your name, everything around me is still singing it. Like a song I can’t get rid of. Like a song I want to unlearn. Like a song that will always belong to my voice no matter how hard I try to burn it away.”

.i like the night... it's the one time in the count of 24 hours, that i am free from owning a shadow.

a shadow it like an itch,
a spot of eczema -
     itchy ******* thing...
mind you,
i've become a person
equivalent of an anti-narcissus:
i felt in love with my shadow,
an image reflected
in a mirror,
has no potency,
    no, potential...

- danzig's 1000 devil's reign -

you could have played
the identity politics card,
you could have...
hmm...

          but then the identity politicians
played the grammatical
****-poor politics game...
sorry... how can i play
identity politics,
if i am a pedigree Pole?
   you want me to fake my
land of birth, and the language i was born
into, and speak it?
you want me to... what?!
unlearn it?!
      Jews unlearn Hebrew,
and speak Yiddish...
       to i have to be the one
who was baptized
to reteach then the Sefirot tree?
mind you... i also want to learn it...

feral ferocity for learning...
a Faustian complex...
   those three years at Edinburgh
university taught me one thing,
and one thing alone...
apart from the bogus
   organic chemistry
schematics of electron migrations...

so...
     ⠽⠁⠓
   oh it's there, in the Sefirot...
      chokhmah
   (wisdom)...

   there's even  (  el  )
                   ⠑⠇
chesed, i.e. love...

              next time i'll be writing
Hebrew, i'll be writing in Braille...
Braille is the new Hebrew for me...

and have you noticed?
given this pitiable Latin alphabet?
vowels, consonants,
consonants being the syllable
architects...
  but only one letter compounded
to a noun...
namely?
        'double u': W...

  and the greeks? omega,
omicron, alpha, beta, gamma...
      no wonder Greek pursues
its prevalence in the sciences...
no actual name given to a letter
in Latin...
no covert meaning...

way too ******* apparent, and weight gain
incubating...

but where is the meaning
of ⠺⠑⠓?!
if there is a ⠽⠁⠓ in the Sefirot,
and there's the over-simplified
   ⠑⠇?
   where the **** is ⠺⠑⠓?
    so the second syllable count
means nothing to ⠓⠁_ ⠎⠓⠑⠍?

greek actually have names
for some of their letters?
what do the Romans have?
castrato choir practice
of a sing-along?!

          so... i'll ask again...
truthfully?
  i'd love to be an interrogator...
i'd ask the questions,
then ask for the torture...
and then do the same torture
to the person being interrogated...
and then tell the interrogated person:
you don't receive third-party
privileges!            
      
i hate the fact that girls cut themselves...
not that i'm haemophobic...
girls leave such a mess...
i'm pretty sure heating up a pair of
scissors, and burning your flesh
can lead to a more, "productive"
excavation of the masochistic reasons
with a tangible genesis...

          cutting is such a barbaric
practice...
     burning?
       mm... you get a chance to sniff
out a perfume of burned flesh...
which is added brownie points...
            
           what a blind man's circle...
having found the yah...
but having to persist in looking
for the weh;
doesn't help that i don't speak
the nomadic tongue,
that hebrew is...

            it's almost like they
want to forget it...
     speaking it only among
orthodoxy,
   and religious practices -
but never in public...
   i'd loath to abandon my mother
tongue...
             for a whim of
multiculturalism,
having learned that...
someone in England, at some private
school, is embarking on
learning Russian or Mandarin...

to the assimilation police i simply add:
you want my mother tongue?
and don't respect my learning
of your tongue?
   come by, with a knife...
AND CUT IT OFF!
                
oh the joys, of originating in a non-colonial
peoples... living in.
a post-colonial people's hellhole.

oh such few words are minded,
no bravery apart
from the homosexuals
as skeletons in the chronicles of Narnia
being discovered among
the skeletons of tyrannosaurus rex
making a bed with its wheelchair able
paws - and the flag of the Cymru
fire-breathing turtles before excavation  
and the myths of the mandarin too;
now tell me the sub-human plot with the
Normans when the anglo-sax reigned
to teach me to unlearn english
to avoid assimilation,
like you taught your former colonial subjects
to integrate and to alievate keeping assimilation:
which you taught to unlearn the mother's
tongue and learn a discrimination
against furthering the multi-cultural project...
which you taught to integrate and
keep at loss a sacred soul of never assimilating
akin to jew...integrate i must,
assimilate i care not for should i be totally
albino or asserting bleached with peace:
albino oder beteuern gebleicht mit frieden.
integrate i must to utilise the coinage
but to assimilate i must turn into a reggae african
with roots in the Caribbean than the Ivory Coast...
and god willing i will not claim to be
an arab's brother to settle karma over
uplifting the curse over Mecca with ibn Saud's
clock-tower; burn!!!

BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR TELEPATHIC PROSE
Lee Sharks & Jack Feistfrom Pearl and Other Poems

1.     Compose real poems telepathically, with mind control powers, inside your glorious brain.

2.     You are your own best advocate. Insist the world acknowledge your poems as artifacts of tiny doom. Accept nothing less. Threaten to smash yourself in the face with gasoline and set your hair on fire. Leap over the seats to aggressively stand inside the world’s personal space and get up in its grill. Take this container of Tic-Tacs and smash it on your forehead. Crush each Tic-Tac individually into your eyeballs and ask the world if it likes your poem, and if it likes your poem, then eat your poem: “Do you like my poem? Then eat it.”

3.     Always seek constant approval, then punch your cat in the face.

4.     Arrive alive. Don’t text and drive.

5.     Always write poems all the time.

6.     Never professionalize writing. Professionalism is the last refuge of responsible people looking for work.

7.     Your life is your poem. Take care to write it biographically. Failing that, invent false biographies and post them on Wikipedia.

8.     Get as much education as you can, then ****** your education in the face to save it from sloppy education. Get enough education to respect your contempt for education.

9.     Give it all that you have, as deep as it goes, as desperate and total as taking a breath.

10.  Also be pedantic mundane pig-critic of precise punctuation juggling and ruthless crossed-out darling murdering of your own puny sentences. Save every draft and revert to original after enormous work, then drown yrself in the bathtub. Remember: editing is organization.

11.  Be long-sighted prodigy of skeptically believing in nothing, but also believe in destiny, but quietly, and hit yourself in the face for naivety’s sake.

12.  You are a seamstress of words—place each stitch carefully, deliberately. Develop a series of rituals and perform them, without variation, prior to placing each word. Allow the frequency and intensity of these rituals to grow until you spend hours, each day, touching and retouching your left index finger to the tip of your nose in a rhythmic, counter-clockwise motion, in sets of thirty revolutions, in order to place a single character. Spend years of your life shut away from the world, wasting away into an awkward, unhygienic shadow of your former self, and have, to show for it, a two-syllable word of Germanic origins on an otherwise clean, white page. This word will be redoubtable, the bedrock of your writing career. Go on to spend vast sums of personal wealth and total dedication, alienating the remaining handful of long-suffering friends who continue, despite all odds, to solicit the memory of your humanity, in order to learn the arts of metalworking, Medieval alchemy, and font design, recreating a metal-cast, alpha-numeric set of Times New Roman font, from scratch, going broke long before “numeric,” and with only the half-formed germs of the characters W, N, and sometimes-vowel Y.  hat are such retrictio s to  ou?  ou are a poet,  ot a mathematicia .  ou are a creature of steel.  ou  ill  rite a  e  and better  orld, a  orld  ithout the letter   , forgi g it, o e smoki g husk of a  ord at a time.

13.  Turn over a new leaf. You’re not getting much done like this, anyways, let’s face it. Break the chains of your censoring, conscious mind; tap into the spontaneous well of unconscious human brilliance that springs from the source of dreams. Thwart the stick-in-*** tyranny of your internal editor by making a commitment to write constantly, without ceasing, editing, or even thinking, no matter what, ignoring the anally retentive quips your brain will no doubt make. Make a further commitment: you will not only write, irrespective of internal censorship, but in a way that is unconscionably terrible, on purpose. Your writing will be, by turns, embarrassing, infantile, automatic, and marmaduke poppers—or shall we say, antagonistic to the indoctrination in repressive concepts such as “sentence” and “word” of your reader, who is always, and only, you. Let your writing be a spiritual discipline of Bat-a-rang pancakes and lightly alarm clock, ding—your toast is done.

14.  Always Alka-Seltzer eyelids all the time.

15.  At last, you are ready to make it new, to ****** your darlings, to first thought, best thought, to your heart’s content. Your adverb will be the enemy of your verb, the difference between your almost-right word and your right word will be the difference between your lightning bug and your lightning. You are ready to have a spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling, then censor the s**t out of it. You are ready to turn your extremes against each other: Unlearn your apple pancakes and burst through the mental barriers; then slow the flood, let the lovely trickle out & edit, edit, edit. Capture spontaneous gem of native human genius, then marshal vast armies of technical knowledge & self-discipline to ensure it glimmers and cuts.

16.  Believe in things like destiny. No really—the path will shatter you so many times your shards will have splinters, your bombshells, shrapnel. By the time you get there—which you probably won’t—even your exhaustion will be tired. Exhaustion of mind and body will have passed so far beyond the physical, and through malaise of spirit, that it will emerge on the other side, as physical exhaustion again. In the face of this, nothing but a little Big Purpose will do. Besides, a little ideology never hurt anyone. Feel free to be all Voltaire with your bad self, in public—but don’t give up.

17.  After all of this, when your will is finally broken (again), and you have given up for the final time (again), start over. The former model wasn’t working. Refashion yourself and your writing. Lather, rinse, usurp your noble half-brother, and repeat, until you get somewhere, or die in the trying.  

18.  Achieve consistency of voice; it is the signature by which you will be known. Your “you” should ring out clearly from each individual letter. In this, the writer is like the salesman. Like a new car, neither the writing’s merits, nor the reader’s needs, will be the final, deciding factor. Ultimately, the deciding factor is you.

19.  Unlike a new car, it is difficult to drive a poem, to use it to get to school or work. Unlike a car salesman, a writer does not wear enormous ties.

20.  Be so consistent that your writing consists in composing the same words, in the same order, creating the some overall voice and style, consistently, over and over, an eternal return of the same. Maintain this disciplined drudgery over the course of years. Let years become decades, and decades, an entire life: You will have “found your voice.” Variety is the spice of life, but consistency is its signature.

20.  Be so consistent that your writing consists in composing the same words, in the same order, creating the some overall voice and style, consistently, over and over, an eternal return of the same. Maintain this disciplined drudgery over the course of years. Let years become decades, and decades, an entire life: You will have “found your voice.” Variety is the spice of life, but consistency is its signature.

21.  Then again, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Throw things up a little bit. One day, put on your hobgoblin hat, the next day, your small mind.

22.  On second thought, re: #16-17: Stop here. You don’t look like much of a writer. Save yourself the trouble of a deep investment that is sure to yield no returns. The prize is big, and not many take it. The Iliad showed us that the prize of writing is life eternal, and taught us to long for that promise; but the Odyssey taught us not to bother. There are many suitors, a single Odysseus. While the husband wends arduously homeward, Penelope weaves impending glory, an evaporating glamour, enchanting them, until he arrives. We are in for a bad end, if we chase another man’s wife, or a prize not rightfully ours. There are many suitors, a crowd of them. They begin as a chittering swarm of bats and end in the very same manner. You cannot have what is not yours. What is yours, no man can take. So, like Emily says,

I smile when you suggest that I delay ‘to publish’—that being foreign to my thought as Firmament to Fin. If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her—if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase—and the approbation of my Dog would forsake me—then—My Barefoot Rank is better—

23.  Therefore, take these Sturm und Drang commandments to the trash heap. Return to step 1, as the only useful piece of advice: Compose real poems telepathically, with mind control powers, inside your glorious brain.

(c) 2014 lee sharks & jack *****

from Pearl and Other Poems:

http://www.amazon.com/Pearl-Other-Poems-Crimson-Hexagon/dp/0692313079/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&qid;=1429895012&sr;=8-1&keywords;=lee+sharks+pearl

An earth sized boulder
dislodged with the thunder
Unleashing catacombs  
of terrestrial darkness
lay compressed beneath it
for a thousand years

The hidden ancients
heard its soul hold forth;  
their rumbling silence
    ―  laid bare ―
They heard its voice
rises up with the ears
of a new-born fawn

Beguiling roots,
solid as a rock,
hold together
like dark matter
A soul weight
beyond measure
shouldering the torn
of a divided heart

Heaviness ...
O' the heaviness ―
just a platitude for
what you feel
when it all comes
tumbling down
to the ground

Venerable
times immemorial:
an urging silence
pushing down
to the grave,
trying to unlearn
the things
never known
about the hearts
we leave behind


Jesse Stillwater

sometimes it's hard
just to pick up a fork.
i find myself too weak, arms too limp.
excuses
upon
excuses
piled like a house of cards,
one breeze and i’ll blow away with it.
you won’t be able to catch me,
to stop me,
i can’t even do that myself.

my heart is heavy,
stomach empty,
i still struggle to eat daily but i’m trying.
i do it just to spite those voices in my head  
when i should be doing it for me, but
it’s hard to block them out  
when they sound a lot like my mother.

sometimes it’s hard
just being alive,
hard to get out of bed when
the weight of the world is pressing down on you.
hard not wanting to die
when the sweet release of these demons is all you find yourself
thinking about,
dreaming about anymore.
dreams of floating through the sky
like the clouds passing;
i’m jealous of the way they hang there, gracefully.
i want to be just like them but
i can’t trust myself not to
fall
back
down
to earth.
i’ve done it too many times before.

i’ve got to remind myself that
recovery takes time.
i’ll never unlearn the calories in a raspberry
but at least now i can drink a glass of orange juice
without shedding a single tear.
sure it’s laced with *****
but don’t worry. it’s not a problem
it’s a coping method,
one you might not approve of but one that works, see
over time the scars on my arms have faded.
heart less heavy,
stomach still empty.
well, not completely empty.
but that’s progress right?

Read more.
Words are the map fragments of wisdom you need to navigate your way in a world constantly sending you searching for that which you don’t yet have a name.

Write more.
And don’t keep it to yourself.  Your voice deserves to be heard too so scream in cursive and whisper in all CAPS, bleed through paper and heal through the spines of notebooks
you’re spiraling onto something, breathe in commas and step over periods because you’re not over
you’re the most beautiful run-on sentence

paint more.
You’re an artist whose perspective warrants an audience,
so leave cerulean fingerprint traces in your titanium touches,
mix gesso with mars and be alizarin against charcoal

stand out. And stand up.

Find adventure in the every day.  Skydive through small talk, zip line through steps up stairs without an end,
life is the ellipses in silences your eyes seek to make stories,

explore.
This world. People. This city you’ve landed yourself and take calculated risks.

Tiptoe through moshpits and stomp through meadows.
Cartwheel into concrete conversations headfirst eyes wide open,

be vulnerable, to those who deserve to see the rawest parts of you.
And leave the ones who’d rather exploit them behind

leave others’ opinions behind.  Let them be the ones collecting dust.
You are stronger than you’ll ever know and ten-fold what they’d ever expect.

So let them guess.
Be the question mark in the corner they can’t place.

Your story is complicated.  But that makes you interesting.
What doesn’t challenge you doesn’t change you and you’ve been challenged each and every day

you get out of bed and speak when so easily you could’ve lost your voice the night you lost your body.
It took you some time and a few nameless faces to claim it again and you’re still working out what that means,
you’ve always had your own way
but all the ****** assault pamphlets name this normal.

[For once it’s a label you don’t detest.]

So this year be normal if you so choose, but also be weird.
Be loud, not small, be confident, and not sorry.
Take up space.
You deserve to.

You are Woman and you are Strong.

Push, but don’t ever shove.
Love unapologetically and fiercely.
But don’t force what a boy is not willing to give.

Find someone who will pay your heart the same attention he does your body.
Scratch that,
find yourself.

Read your body’s brail, your chapters of goosebumps, and play chess with checkers across your skin.
Unlearn and relearn and unlearn and learn to remember you are enough and it is your turn.

Look in the mirror and accept the pieces looking back are in progress.

Keep writing.

Watch the moon make way for the sun. Be brighter than both.
Let your irises draw constellations across galaxies unwritten.
Move so far forward, you stop having a reason to look back.

Forgive that which you cannot change.
You’ll make more mistakes, scrape more knees and trip on chainlink chokers, your jewelry limbs you haven’t yet untangled.
But forgive yourself.

Kiss the boy. Kiss the girl. Kiss no one.
Live in the present tense and with future declaratives.
Appreciate the thousands of little moments still looking to be made yours. Make them yours.

You are worth all the struggle.  Don’t forget.

Be kind but don’t rewind.  
Stay authentic even when you don’t make sense and your words aren’t oil enough to separate

paddle through the waves eyes closed if you have to,
the salt may burn your scars and you may lose your bearings, but keep going.
Maybe this is the year you’re going to learn to swim.

It's strange how
A 30 year smoking habit can be broken in a few months
But an 8 month habit of loving someone
Takes forever to unlearn

The swell of your feverish hands over mine.
Sweat soaking into my skin.
I’m clutching every part of you I can grasp,
Every part of you I can fit into my palm.

We’re sitting beneath the hollow tree,
Beneath the ocean of a sky,
Beneath the screaming black-billed cuckoos.

We don't say a word because we don't need to;
Just silent prayers burned between us,
Scarred into pale, malnourished bones.

I look at you as your sloe-eyed gaze
bores into the mountains of clouds swimming above us.

I want to kiss you,
But all I can do is lay my head on your shoulder,
Wishing I could build a home out of your collarbones.

I don't ever feel safe anymore.

Except when I’m forgetting everything, with you.

At dusk,
I tried to unlearn the way the gold in your skin,
Possessed your face in scintillant rays of spots.

I could count each one if I had the time,
But you’re already turning your spine stuffing back away from me,
And skipping back home

Without the bother or concern to look back.

i know this has been set in the stone of your mind,
but consider otherwise,
for just one moment,
that this could be the most harm you've ever experienced,
and it just may not be your friend at all

I was taught that being stubborn
is a virtue that every young boy should have,
that to decide how you govern
your life and your path.

I was taught that being stubborn
is simply a way to be,
that wanting and yearning
provided my journey's fee.

I was taught that being stubborn
was a sign of respect, of pride.
Unlearn all that'd been thought
and learn all from inside.

I was taught that being stubborn
would create a wall around me,
a nocturne of darkness
for which only i could see.

Now i am alone, all stubborn and virtuous
wishing for a chance.
but this disease is cure-less
Through no other circumstance.

Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, ****** like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed
with love. At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded
down starch halls with the other unnested throng
in wheeling baskets. You tip like a cup; your head
moving to my touch. You sense the way we belong.
But this is an institution bed.
You will not know me very long.

The doctors are enamel. They want to know
the facts. They guess about the man who left me,
some pendulum soul, going the way men go
and leave you full of child. But our case history
stays blank. All I did was let you grow.
Now we are here for all the ward to see.
They thought I was strange, although
I never spoke a word. I burst empty of you,
letting you see how the air is so.
The doctors chart the riddle they ask of me
and I turn my head away. I do not know.

Yours is the only face I recognize.
Bone at my bone, you drink my answers in.
Six times a day I prize
your need, the animals of your lips, your skin
growing warm and plump. I see your eyes
lifting their tents. They are blue stones, they begin
to outgrow their moss. You blink in surprise
and I wonder what you can see, my funny kin,
as you trouble my silence. I am a shelter of lies.
Should I learn to speak again, or hopeless in
such sanity will I touch some face I recognize?

Down the hall the baskets start back. My arms
fit you like a sleeve, they hold
catkins of your willows, the wild bee farms
of your nerves, each muscle and fold
of your first days. Your old man's face disarms
the nurses. But the doctors return to scold
me. I speak. It is you my silence harms.
I should have known; I should have told
them something to write down. My voice alarms
my throat. "Name of father-none." I hold
you and name you ******* in my arms.

And now that's that. There is nothing more
that I can say or lose.
Others have traded life before
and could not speak. I tighten to refuse
your owling eyes, my fragile visitor.
I touch your cheeks, like flowers. You bruise
against me. We unlearn. I am a shore
rocking off you. You break from me. I choose
your only way, my small inheritor
and hand you off, trembling the selves we lose.
Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.

Life is nothing more than madness.
Probably there is no karma, no right, no wrong.
It's all a bunch of mechanic or random probabilities fighting against emotions, which are simply chemical reactions happening in our brain. Often good people get bad things, bad people get good things.
Simple: no meaning, no reasons.
We have these curious habits to give life some meaning just because we want some sort of reward for our efforts.
We put effort in things because inside and deeper each one of us is a dreamer, even the most skeptical man on earth.
But we should go through madness first, to get rid of our inner-fake-dreamer, to unlearn the ******* we have been told from birth and to re-learn how to dream properly, with the help of a less magic but different truth.
If we decide to go through madness we need to know we may not come out sane from it, and sometime we will have left just that little bit to keep going and survive. If we succeed we will understand that there is nothing to win, nothing to lose, that is all about perception and everything is a cyclic succession of experiences to use wisely.
- Manuela Camporaso

i find nothing intelligent about philosophy,
if in were to prescribe a self-help book
i'd prescribe any philosophy book,
it would become mantra to: dumb-down.
fascinated as i am, dancing
pretending to drum, when there's
a sudden jolt and i sing hail! in the
vandal epice, i am fully intact as a
skeleton of an albatross - and stand in a shape
of ᛉ... zigfreid... jawolh...
    having spent 3 weeks in Poland,
in some obscure city gave me utter peace...
but hey, why not come back to England
and get a moral sun-tan of absolute
*******... why not dress up
  in post-colonial nuances, why not experience
post-colonialism?
         3 weeks without the internet
and i really, really did feel relief...
           i thought television is bad...
well, it is bad, if you have internet access...
but with the internet, comes the Belzeebub,
a swarm of words, of opinions that only lead
to a cul de sac of your own basis:
for not talking on a street corner, with a sign
dangling on your neck like a cowbell
reading: the end is near!
          i get it, it's a fetish, it's man claiming
the end will come when he'll obliterate gravity,
i''m cool with that, shindig and all the ponce
of an urban vocab...
   talk to me like a farmer though... please,
please, please do... i want to talk to a farmer...
i can't deal with this cool urban kids
and their microaggression and, whatever it is
they have stashed in their socks...
     because you really can't read a philosophy
book and care to be intelligent...
         i've read a few, and each time i return to
the most despotic creature i could ever wish
to be... the one that's perplexed that he
say something tangible, something worth
riddling... but nothing outside of
the arithmetic... of gluing i am dodo
therefore i'm extinct...
     try to imagine living in a country without
a colonial past... i can, i just did, spent
3 weeks in Poland, and after having acquired
English, like the good, assimmilated foreigner
i am: i want to unlearn it...
   i'm dying to unlearn it... i ****** wish i didn't
speak it...
              it's too global for me...
    i speak it, but i don't want to speak it,
but then i invested over 20 years of my life in speaking
it, and thinking in it...
       i'd also like to see little england,
the england with its camper vans and it's yorkshire
terrier... but i am currently holding
an anchor on the periphery of London,
and boy, the drag is something, i am actually
enjoying this paralysis...
but you can't expect to read a philosophy and
get the idea that suddenly there's a theory
of relativity sleeping within you...
    read a philosophy book, learn to become an idiot...
    intelligence can't even stomach awe...
it always has to say something witty,
be something opportune, have a dinner party...
fake it...
           the idiot just looks at the world
and says: huh? it really is a chance to play the Frankenstein
monster... so many people, and they have so
much care to trade, sell apples, argue...
so much care to attain the ****** appeal,
to trim their hair...
   so much energy to trade, sell life insurance,
to argue...
               where do they get it from, that mana?
it can really be so welcoming,
to experience life in a non-colonial society,
    to be bored, to do nothing and simply be human...
now that's a first...
              to do nothing and simply be, human...
   me thinks that animals have it easy,
i wish i could have the digestive system of a koala
bear...
                to be a creature with a mono-facet
adaptability dynamic... well, a bi-facet adaptation
scenario... me, coordinates (0, 0), the thing
i want, coordinates (1, 1)... move!
     not me, i'm human, i have to go to the *******
cinema, i have to attend a funeral,
i have to do a, b, c, and all the way down through to z...
    evolution is cruel...
               this constant physical bombardment
with sensual teasing, and then being ****** anally by
some cognitive fudge phalllus...
    it's really become obsolete to even think,
there's no: think for the pleasure of mere thought...
now i'm waiting for a shepherd to
huddle me into a crowd in need of writing a book...
i really don't know how the natives
  deal with this, but if i were to suddenly speak my
native tongue i'd be better off, english is really
being stretched, so many bad, i mean really bad
accents... they only speak the english they speak
because english is a barren wasteland without any
diacritical marks... it's covert language,
puny secretive bollocking at the start,
and nothing else at the end...
    but it really is a headache knowing english
these days... it's doing my head in...
          i speak english and i'm already imaging
myself head-banging, or knocking down
the al-buraq - if you know Polish then you'll
just say: the beetroot.
                       and whatever the media tells you,
everyone in the trenches of society
actually adores Putin...
             it could be sad, but at least it's not so
flimsy and artsy after all...
   a society with clear indication that internet
megalomania is not permitted...
                  yes, i really am writing you a postcard
with a: wish you would go there...
     even with its Christian conservatism...
      it's actually bearable...
becuase, having 3 weeks there, and as i get older
(even though i'm only 30)...
  i find England: exhausting... literally
like dragging elephant testicles wherever i walk...
it's exhausting... England is exhausting...
   talking English is exhausting...
     this beacon of hope and freedom has become
a **** nugget, set alight on a toothpick...
     i've lived in England for so many years,
and have yet to taste the local delicacy... of an English
******... while a story emerges in Rotherham
about a ******* cartel... it begins to really break
your heart... there's you, ***-starved and
having the tendency to over-exaggerate a handshake
and there's the world...
     you can't really drink enough alcohol these days
to knock yourself out...
and i've been drinking, on and on, on and on... and on...
and it never stops being so depressing!
     there, my tongue is lose... it's a streaker on a
football pitch... running wild... giving it all
for the worth of simply: frenzy...
             but there's something very ancient about this
dynamic... the fact that these are the lands
once occupied by the romans...
sure, in Poland you use the Latin alphabet, but
the spaghetti maneli crew never threw their
pizza that far up north...
                          go to any country that doesn't
boast of a Roman heritage...
that's for starters...
                         if the place boasts about being
conquered by the romans...
                  you end up watching a funeral that
just won't go away... not how the latin alphabet
was best symbiotic with numbers due to the holes
and you can't code on a computer screen
with anything, but latin... try writing an app.
using arabic or hebrew...
it truly is a language based on: matchsticks made
in heaven...
                 just the areas where the romans didn't
settle... the "uncivilised" regions...
    it's enough that the Slavs probably had the equivalent
of runes... and a polytheism of some sort...
but all i see is: perfected exploitation of the latin
alphabet, and well, might as well forget the rest.
    now that's major digression...
      it's as if i'm trying to have a conversation,
  but then the claustrophobic tendency of narration
take off and i''m thrown into a Tartar army...
       entranced into singing allah'u akbar... instead
of reciting Rumi...
                    it is what it is,
and since England is a major player in world
affairs, there's nothing little about it, even
if you live in Dover...
                 yet there is a nation-state serenity somewhere,
where everything is truly small,
  truly content with very little, where it's not
gagging to advertise itself, to sell itself...
    perhaps Auschwitz is a blessing as a "tourist"
destination after all...
           come to think of it... people will be children
around the pyramids...
they'll climb a pyramid... make funny photographs
of the pyramids what afar, as if they were holding
it... can't see any funny photographs coming
from Auschwitz... people gearing up to
smoke a shisha in a gas chamber...
                       or climbing into one of the crematorium
ovens to replicate a Tokyo hotel "room",
maybe Auschwitz is the blessed deterent of globalisation?
it's a great question...
           while the Czechs import hen and stag parties
to their capital with cheep beer...
  no one from the west seems to feel the same
drunken bliss in Krakow... what with Auschwitz
so close...
               they'd rather drink with the Russian
separatists in Kiev!
                  and indeed, what the German rage left,
i wear it like a black diamond...
              a crow's croak...
so, does that mean i have to appeal to some
imaginative conquered-party appeal?
   that i let it all happen, while i pressed the snooze
button on my clock?
     i don't know... Poland is a bit odd, and coming
from there, it almost seems that i should be writing
about Moldavia.
              and blessed are those: firmly rooted in one
place, with neither care nor obligation
   to travel far...
                          lest they bring nothing but
scurvy, in hope of bringing the beacon of civilisation
  and only that, no olympic flame: but a plague.
England is a land of displaced people,
  and can't be anything other than:
i got ants in my pants and i'm going to sing the blues!

Marooned  land-locked
    on  island  earth

Born with an orphan’s
    unknowable ache

Born with an empath heart
– always feeling too much –
mystic receptors wide awake
    in a highly sensitive soul

It’s as if I've walked along
      forever alone,
    one step at a time,
    lost in a restless nebula
from the earth to the moon

Consciously dreaming
      to steal away, 
bearing the weight of the sky, 
upwards over the mountain,
away from these chains
         that bind

    The maelstroms echo
behind silenced, probing eyes
with an unsated thirst
      to be wanted
    dead or otherwise:

Never understanding
    the reasons why,
spinning around in my head;
where "once upon a time"
        was hidden,
        buried alive              

A lifetime spent trying
    to unlearn the things
    I wish I’d never
    sought to know,
    clinging to the love
I've touched in my life
  evermore enwombed
       in my heart

    Passing milestones:
walking another barefoot mile
passing so many locked doors
    without keyholes
– way outside the lines –

    Choking on all
    the latent words
      lay fallow, 
      left unsaid 
Always looking for
something dreamt
but seldom manifest 

Growing so tired and weary
with no one standing by my side;  
no one to lay down beside me
    to take a rest for awhile

Just another chapter
in a timeless same old story;
  another dark star
      burned – out
      – vanished –
into the utter obscurity
of a sky so close and yet
       so far away...


Jesse Stillwater ... August 22, 2018

I.
AS flower to sun its drop of dew
Gives from its crystal cup,
So I, as morning gift to you,
This poor verse offer up.

II.
As flowers upon the summer wind
Their air-born odours shake,
So, in all fragrance you may find,
I give but what I take.

III.
My tree blooms green through snow and heat;
Your love is sap and root,—
And this is but the breathing sweet
Of fairest blossom-shoot.

IV.
An outgrowth of the happy days
In wedded lives begun—
Two lives, in all their work and ways,
Indissolubly one.

V.
The force that was to bind us so
We very dimly knew.
Ah, love! it seems so long ago,
And yet the years are few.

VI.
We did not wait for tides to rise,
Nor cared that winds were rough;
They call'd us foolish—we were wise;
God gave us wealth enough.

VII.
He only knows what precious change
We took of Him for gold;
What blessing such a narrow range
Of circumstance can hold.

VIII.
No troubles now could memory spare,
No lightest touch of pain;
No hard experience of care
Would we unlearn again.

IX.
Such love surrounds, such beauty lies
On our most common needs,
As silver ****-frost glorifies
The wayside sticks and weeds.

X.
All trials that are overpast,
All cares that are to be,
But make more sacred and more fast
The ties 'twixt you and me.

XI.
They are but clear lights shining through
The mist that round us rolls;
They are but touchstones, fine and true,
For fond and faithful souls.

XII.
They are but fires, to cleanse and clean
Our human love from stain;
For naught of sordid, false, or mean
From those blest fires remain.

XIII.
They are but keys within the wards
Of that last, inmost door,
Where the heart's dearest treasure-hoards
Are garner'd evermore.

XIV.
Ah, dear! our very griefs are glad
Our every cross is crown'd;
We are not able to be sad,
Such comfort wraps us round.

XV.
How calm the haven where we rest,
Now passion's storms are past!
How warm and soft the little nest
Which shelters us at last!

XVI.
How—blue, pellucid, and divine—
Through all our days and nights,
The clear eyes of our children shine
Like heavenly beacon-lights!

XVII.
We listen to the laughter sweet
Whose echoes come and go,
The music of the little feet
That patter to and fro.

XVIII.
And deepest thoughts of God awake,
Who hath reveal'd Him thus,
And, in His goodness, deign'd to make
His own abode with us.

XIX.
To God, in Christ, we kneel to-day
(Whose will on earth be done);
As He hath made us, let us pray
That He will keep us, one.

**.
Together, may we feel Him stand
About our path and bed;
Together may we, hand in hand,
His royal highway tread.

XXI.
The dear ones He has given, to be
Of His redeem'd the type—
Together, may we live to see
Their budding promise ripe.

XXII.
And, O my dearest! may we lie,
In our last night of rest,
Asleep together, peacefully,
Upon our Father's breast

Someone was told me that the sounds of our friendship was the adventures of a lifetime.

It wasn’t until I unlearn the possibilities of wrestling with today’s truth and lies.

Becoming a wreck in the ship was like becoming ooh hey and now it’s time to walked away without saying our goodbyes in time and let it dies down and fly.

My heart had to relearn of our hidden secrets which relies on an unseen, understanding, and uncompromising situationships.

The real reality wasn’t accelerating the acceptance of what it could’ve been if we were to ace of what we’re to ready to face it.

It was actually facing of what are the ways of what we’re dealing of our ourselves in tiny pieces.

prelimenary coordinates - a blindman playing chess.

well... you either drink, and write sparingly,
     or you don't drink, and you write
a novel...
    but who would have thought, that there
would be poetic odes involving coffee...
     it's staggering how many women write
poems and have to concern themselves with
coffee...
  i down a litre of whiskey a night, don't know
what a hangover is anymore,
        and i can beat out more words
than women, who use a stimulant and write
   crumbs... when i expect a loaf of bread...
if not this website, then another, and the scenario
is the same: the glorification of coffee...
           it just shows you how barricaded the human
narrative is, of the soul...
        poetry merely nibbles, and i know it's
flaws... write without paragraphs,
or care for punctuation marks... and it's immediately
a poem...
   or... oh god forbid! there's something profound
being said with a few words...
      and it has to be profound...
                      yes, i'm the Gargamel and those
are my smurfs...
                             strange that Freud didn't think up
the man-child complex...
                         which is the opposite of the madonna-*****
complex, which he actually did...
           Edward Hopper was also bemused by
these two mental pharmacologists...
                did a little sketch holding Freud as pillar 1,
and Jung as pillar 2.
    but coffee and poetry: i'd expect more from this
latitude...
        and it's still a case of:
                   people cling to the raft that's their
mental narrative mondus operandi...
                Kant tried to say something as concrete
with 5 + 7 = 13... and read any philosophy book...
    Kant isolates the ''i think'', and Hegel isolates
    the i = i, or i am i...
                              and these are serious thinkers...
but Descartes has said a limit...
                       thinking defines subjectivity...
      thinking the essential component of what's
   not thought about: the existential compromise of
   being per se...
                    and how i always seem to find philosophy
as a stumbling block concerning everything i write...
    it's almost as if i can't escape the world of
abstracts...          a degree in chemistry didn't help either...
     am i truly so un-realistic?
               not that i'm afraid of being drawn toward
the un-real...          it's that humanity seems only like
an infertile groundwork speeding toward a forgivable
promise...
    i just wanted to say: you drink and write poetry...
or you don't drink, and write a novel...
      and true to a heart's cause i will say:
that straitjacket of what poetry is...
                           whether rhyme... or other technique...
    hanging over it...
                           it can't do:
      i abhor Nietzsche for making poetry a science...
  and it is: too scientific...
              i'd never think so little can be deemed
so perplexing... or having that essence...
                    so yes... Kant
                         really does struggle to say something
profound, but he actually does...
                     over and over again... namely:
i'd never could think of so many faculties of my mind...
    not that's what i call a plastic saying...
      ****-licking brown-nosing, call it what you like...
it's just so terrible that philosophy cannot reach
toward being a humanism, like a novel always can...
     which is why i could eat a historical novel
        by Kraszewski in three weeks in between allocating
that time to the festive season,
                     and it took me 2 years to read Kant's
critique... until i let go of that post-scriptum necessity
of having to stop at every setence and do a rubick's cube...
     a bit like: well... aren't those electron-migration
   schematics they teach you in chemistry, a little bit pointless?
   who give's a badger's nut-sack about how electrons migrate
when a a cabron to oxygen bond forms?
                         but they do teach that...
           which is why you can take a novel to bed,
on the train... but so much focus is needed for that other novel,
the scientific one... the grandeur of... philosophy...
                and that's when i let go...
   the last part of the critique does allow you to read
piece of work... like a novel... unless of course that was my
need to do so...
                    so yes: transcendental methodology in Kant's
critique: does read like a novel... at some point
you just have to let go.

ii. ...

and you do... try saying philosophy without saying
something pretentious....
               and i dare say: as long as the fewest number
of people concern themselves with it:
  the more chances we have for electricity,
plumbing, food on the table...
               but by now there's this talk of a curse...
premature Socratic antics... mind you: he was an old man...
but Plato be ******, he wrote down what the old man
spoke: and a clear number of them succumbed to
      the tumble-**** effect...
                      no real prospects for life...
        and, evidently, the dead gods philosophised,
while the rest remained: prone to throwing a show of
macho, and worshipped the body...
Olympus shone...  
   by now you should know that i don't know what
i'm doing...
                  give me the killer-switch to launch a nuclear
strike and i'd probably say: maracas!
shake shake shake...     fidgety in the brothel...
shake shake shake...
             that's the weird thing, every time i went to
a brothel i became over-heated...
      i sat there, the whole **** place always reminded me
of a perfume... jack daniels...
   and i could feel myself over-heating...
  i don't known if that was the angel conscience talking
to me... but i always felt those eyes of scrutiny...
       mind you, once the whole "naughty'' escapade
took off... i forgot those relationships where
                    an impotence was crowned...
   don't know: maybe prostitutes just know my pin-number
and hold to say to little richard: off to the crusades with you!
     phenomenal...
                                         well... thank god for
the north african imports! i'd start thinking all european
women are bound to be: neglected.
               and was it ever, not only about ***?
    it's nice to doubt it...
                           next time i'll woodpecker a grave.
but hey! the promised land!
                           at least you'll have someone to cry
over your grave...
   and did i tell you how there's this cult of the grave
in Poland? yep, that's not a personal reality,
it's a populist manifesto... i'm starting to see it
as a hell where people sort of forgot to state their emotion
to the people, now lying in those tombs...
         give me a Hindu wedding with fire!
  i wanna become elemental!
and look, libido on fire... a billion vishnu-******* in
Bangladesh...   it's this thirst for fame in western
societies that's going to be a downsize...
                                 over there that's like a **** in
a tornado...              ha ha! it really is!
   but then again, here i am, a graveyard hyenna...
walking in Liberace's talk of style...
  most of these graves, really are: tacky...
    just like Liberace, the greatest showbiz conman of
the 20st century... i love the fact that he fooled so many
women... i mean... that guy was almost as good
as ****** when it came to mesmerising people...
but Liberace had a nieche audience... so...
                 no khaki for the ss...
                                           and i dare to hold
an ethnicity? in tune with bob marley: one love, one people...
it has never been so painful to strategise globalisation...
         it's this ethnic cleansing that everyone agreed to
provided they received a smart-phone...
                   or a McDonald's fetish... and that's saying it cheap...
but that's how it feels on the periphery of H'america...
little ol' England boycots Europe...
                     and it's like: huh?
                                           presto! dum-dum.
    sometimes i start thinking that i have a hydra for a tongue...
and the more i drink, the more i start to see
       it splintering up into a polyphony construct,
but more a case of: polyphony of subjects...
   and yes, aren't we all those internet losers...
when the most powerful man in the world...
     uses twitter. bastions of respectable comment!
yes, i.e. newspapers... we're riding this meteor to the end...
          does anyone still consider newspapers to be
the pledges of a free society? i must have been asleep for
the past 20 years then...
                      someone switched on this chaos-turbine,
and we're all shoving our two cents of opnions'-worth into it...
and it's not stopping...
            and yet you still read in newspapers, this underlining
feeling of being condescended... as if they are the sole
authority... they have to behave like little despots...
                           social media's power is invested in its
shock reverberation... think: Marx in the 21st century...
           but can you? is this some pseudo Marxism?
             i might have bypassed all the king-makers and
walls... but i have no leverage... my opinions are
     as cheap as chips... well: we got ourselves a unison converson...
   i still don't see how the television zeitgeist still thinks
that the internet zeitgeist is no connected with ''real life''...
i mean... **** me! where's the highstreet with all the shops?
on the internet. where is the frontline of wars? on the internet.
  where do suicides take place? on the internet,
from all the cyber bugs that people start to represent...
    if this isn't real life... then i guess i must be sitting,
and writing this in some medieval castle in transylvania,
    and my computer is powered by a legion of
hamsters on exercise-wheels, in a damp room, lit by a candle.

iii.

for me, this is how reading a philosophy book looks like:

| | |
     fig. 1
                                          /   \
                                            _
                 ­                                 fig. 2
    Δ
       fig. 3
                                           A
                                               fig. 4

it's like i want to see something with some clarity;
there is clear movement
      concerning a book like that,
              but unlike a standard novel:
there is clearly nothing concerning the: any given
  hope to disperse the mist.
                you're given the blunt truth:
the use of language...
                     again, it would be easier to call forward
a use of a tomahawk... or a guillotine...
            philosophy books never establish civilisations,
they break them.
                and do i think that the crucifix is a profanity
of the tetragrammaton? yes.
                do i feel Spinoza's anguish? probably.
when you read philosophy to start to waver,
it's almost necessary to unlearn language, and with
each philosophy book: learn it over again.
     you can't remain strapped to this culture
of emphasis of singled-out words...
              we can't find a constructive basis if we're
about to start any mechanism from such a dynamic,
isolating certain words and weighing them
                       obstructs language...
                 i can't even begin to fathom a pledge
to using a language, if there are these plebian obstructions...
i did write some notes when i spent these past 3 weeks
in Poland, but i'm scared of rewriting them...
                    i can claim to have understood
their content at the time,
but the context disparity is too much for me...
                 i'm rereading them in England
and i can only see England as a nightmarish construct
of such grandeour... that i might only be seen
speaking truth in the north of it...
                nor do i like the tri-tier categorisation
of man... if you read Kant, you'd be afraid of
man's laconic approach to the mind, stating
the three boundaries, and literally no faculty interactions...
  consciousness (the artist), denoting the overly-sensitive,
the subconscious (the worker), denoting the athletic construct
   and liberation from the daily toils of pure physical
    disposition...
and the unconscious (the zombie)...
   if you read Kant and explore the faculties...
and then turn toward the Freudian populism:
   there's enough reason to be concerned...
                  i can't be saying someone anti-vogue:
and that was my proper concern, that i might be saying
someone not recountable in any sort of realism...
          that mine is an isolated case...
         ditto alongside: why are we juggling the tri-tiers,
and so bombastic and even celebratory in huddling
toward these safety-nets of being human?
    thus said: the reflective man has died...
       in his place came the reflexive man...
                             and if there really is a worthwhile
stance to be a: **** sapiens...
   then all hope for a bewildered man is gone...
                 when the potency of robotics escaped science
fiction, and all trodden paths of orthodox science were
      fed to science fiction, humanity could begin
the process of discarding the offshoots...
          
iv.

the new testament... a book riddled with metaphors...
no wonder the greeks exploited the hebrew literalism...
and yes, plato the precursor made this very real...
by testifying that poetry had no place in the republic,
the new testament had to become solely poetic...
   the new testament is a rebellion against plato's republic...
it's a book wholly compromised on metaphor...
culminating in a book that's founded on imagery...
the gosepls are, once again, arithmetically speaking,
resembling the crucifix... which damns the concept
of the tetragrammaton...
                      as a book: it's only gibberish in
its final circumstance of revelation as a book of imagery...
   and in its preceding case: a book of metaphors...
who wouldn't be apprehensive to be born human
with such a thing being rampant?!
                    imagery is gibberish, given that we
have compentent painters out there...
and metaphor is metaphysics, given that we have
competent magicians out there...
   so how far apart are the words: qua             and
                   quo?
   as good a question as: how far apart are the words
                          phor               and phren?
       φoρ                       &                            φρην?
        so in the congregation of μετα, how are they
so apart?  looking at language from an alphabetical
perspective... it's hard to see anything inspirational...
    nor the tangens divergence of words
that are nonetheless so proximate in their construct...
a bit like the genetic proximity of man and ape,
or man and a banana...
   φoρ (the bearer of the beyond) -
                φρην (a mind concerned with things
under the curtain) -
                        and so: the futility of looking for
        a soul... became translated as the new found feudalism
of looking for a mind:
  given the common consensus: we're all mad....
so too looking at mythology could be revised:
  that myth of narcissus and echo...
or narcissus and psyche...
                         or φρην & πσιχη -
                we already know that there's an aesthetic
in Greek, at least they showed us
      that it can be σimple, when acknowledged
  and practised -
which means transcribing the ease of handwriting
   into a digital format, can be seen as an unnecessary
complexity - as if me currently looking for a word
that ends, and showcases the most obvious Grecian
aesthetic (without mention ο, ε, ω, η, œ)...
but with due mention: so where the second variant
of α, given there's æ?
                           it really is hard to find coherency
in human language... i'm still trying to conjure up
the second sigma... unless i hit the plural noteς...
there... i hit them... as simple as that.
  and yes: the father of the french hooked c
in garçon, came from this: the sigma used at the end
of wordς... i suspect that how things were denoted
to be possessed in english, also came from it.
once again: handwritting is bewildering on this digital canvas.

v.*

i don't have an atheistic argument, or a theistic argument,
i'v

Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, ****** like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed
with love. At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded
down starch halls with the other unnested throng
in wheeling baskets. You tip like a cup; your head
moving to my touch. You sense the way we belong.
But this is an institution bed.
You will not know me very long.

The doctors are enamel. They want to know
the facts. They guess about the man who left me,
some pendulum soul, going the way men go
and leave you full of child. But our case history
stays blank. All I did was let you grow.
Now we are here for all the ward to see.
They thought I was strange, although
I never spoke a word. I burst empty
of you, letting you learn how the air is so.
The doctors chart the riddle they ask of me
and I turn my head away. I do not know.

Yours is the only face I recognize.
Bone at my bone, you drink my answers in.
Six times a day I prize
your need, the animals of your lips, your skin
growing warm and plump. I see your eyes
lifting their tents. They are blue stones, they begin
to outgrow their moss. You blink in surprise
and I wonder what you can see, my funny kin,
as you trouble my silence. I am a shelter of lies.
Should I learn to speak again, or hopeless in
such sanity will I touch some face I recognize?

Down the hall the baskets start back. My arms
fit you like a sleeve, they hold
catkins of your willows, the wild bee farms
of your nerves, each muscle and fold
of your first days. Your old man's face disarms
the nurses. But the doctors return to scold
me. I speak. It is you my silence harms.
I should have known; I should have told
them something to write down. My voice alarms
my throat. "Name of father-none." I hold
you and name you ******* in my arms.

And now that's that. There is nothing more
that I can say or lose.
Others have traded life before
and could not speak. I tighten to refuse
your owling eyes, my fragile visitor.
I touch your cheeks, like flowers. You bruise
against me. We unlearn. I am a shore
rocking you off. You break from me. I choose
your only way, my small inheritor
and hand you off, trembling the selves we lose.
Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.

Kashmir  

Known but uncertain.
A macabre aura in her lush green valley
Swirls along the lanes and the by lanes,
Humming the death songs, and
Mocking the mother's lullaby;
Inundates the spring of love
Reeling under the gales of remorse !

I- Pulwama

Pulsating pain,
Unbeknown to the servants of chair,
Leaches out the marrow of tolerance,
Wobbles the calmness of quiet sea,
And reduces the sane to stupors;
Mayhem clouds the canvas of peace
And ruins the crop of pride!

II- Shopian

Singing the songs of hope, but-
Hearth of ignominy blazes its zenith
Over the apple-bough bedecked contours.
Perforated is every bud that dares to live
In the middle of the 'dance of death'
Akin to the blind devastating tornado,
Nay, a fair of cherishing right to cease life!

III- Kulgam

Kind enough to lit the candle of austerity,
Unknown but to decipher abysmal cause of
Long lacuna in a journey called life;
Gog and Magog they name them
Arraying the apostles of deceit;
Machiavellianism it is, do they know!

IV- Anantnag

Amplified agony of terrorized souls
Nibble at the crumbs of shattered dreams
Along the periphery of devastated 'Lal-Chowk';
Nomadic but still the images find abode
Tethered with mournful sand of 'Sangam',
Nay, undulating terrain stands it firm
All denizens are but a reflection of
Galeanthropy!

V- Srinagar

Schizophrenic- An epithet
Round the clock they wear;
Illusionary clouds all around
Neap the momentum of ship
And strangulate everything in a fit of despair
Gushing out the marrow of patience
And leaving behind infertile soil
Regretting what it had?!

VI- Budgam

Beseeching to blossoms of almond-
Unlearn to rely on the artifacts
Destruction with their only aim;
Gabel otherwise bound to pay we are  
Along with the honour and digity,
Mundane- a certificate to be killed?!

VII- Bandipora

Beside the 'Wular Lake'
Antiquarian lot with over burdened brows-
Nothing to do but recollecting the days:
'Demons when were worshipped, and
Idols of falsity followed';
Pine high dreams kissing the ground
Over and above that can be documented;
Rolling is the agonising arid pain
Aching all the wasteland of wounds!

VIII- Ganderbal

Gloss of undulating terrain
Anguish in the paroxysms of swindle
Notches of which still bleed
Darkness of dark demegogues;
Eating up of the grey matter follows
Relying on the spoon feed, and
Blackout of the nursery of the intellect
Among the denizens,
Lost in sighs and sobs!

IX- Baramullah

Black and blue still explicit over
Amicable land of dreamers-
Roasted they are from decades;
Along the banks of Jhelum
Mutilated memories are hung
Under the hovering black clouds-
'Lost for words' is the expression,
Living souls visiting this garrison;
Alas! Caught we are between the deep sea and the devil
Heros we need in a land of sheepskin prophets!



X- Kupwara

'Kiss of death' is for the democracy
Unabsolved case of 'Kunun Poshpora';
Pacified unmarked mass graves
Welcome you to the countryside
Amidst the loaves of corpse, and
Roar of egos
Asking the citizens to prove their identity!

My heart is tired,
It waits for you in dark corners where even the moonlight can no longer touch it.
It counts the days that way,
Missing you.
It asks me how many phases it must witness before you come back,
I don't know how to say you won’t.
My heart still remembers the first time I met you,
It still thinks I write poems about your laughter which became the only metaphor I wanted to write about.
It told me that your eyes were the safest place I ever found myself in,
And between those late-night drives and nights that turned into mornings,
I realized my heart was right.
My heart needs to learn how to let you go.
To take your goodbye, say thank you- and leave.
I need to make it understand that you are an eternity it was not meant to keep.
And the harder it tries to make you stay-
The bigger the cracks you will leave.
My heart is stubborn.
It has tried to keep oceans and galaxies-
Has tried to capture sunsets and sunrises,
But you are more than that-
Yet it still tried to keep you.
My heart needs to unlearn your name,
Because it has given you all my metaphors.
And when I write,
It’s you, it’s you, it’s you and
I miss you, I miss you.
Oh God I miss you.
Heart forgive me, he is not coming home.
Heart forgive me, I don't know how to tell you we are not what he wants anymore.
Heart forgive me, I was too late.
Heart forgive me, I wanted him to be it- too.
Heart forgive me, loving him was never wrong.
My heart is not sorry,
It will never apologize for being
Too open
Too fragile
Too soft
Too big
Too broken,
Because it has held so many wonderful infinities,
It has been home to so many memories.
How can it be sorry?
When it has lived countless of lives.
My heart does not regret you.
It needs to do a lot of things, but for now the only thing it seems to want to do
Is- love you.
Soon, it will hang your portrait in its gallery of almost-
Almost.

Up where the moon belongs-
Until it learns to stop looking for you-
For now, my heart- is yours.

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of ****** is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Black is white and white is red,
Whose to care when we are dead?
Yellow is pink and pink is blue,
Has the hatred gotten to you?

Is it silly to enlarge the pain?
It's just a skin color just the same;
What some people think is real,
Is imaginery madness, that's the deal.

If the same eternal God almighty,
Molded us all and none are shoddy,
Why should we decree it's wrong,
When someone sings a different song?

Where the tree roots take deeply hold,
Makes children think  they only fit the mold,
Parents shape and tell them horrendous lies,
So out they go to make others suffer and cry.

Unlearn this and that along your way,
Determine your own future, this I say,
Remember that shades of colors are grand,
When the muriel created we all share and
understand.

Can't we hope and pray, this is so,
We all are color blind, don't you know?
To live and love by actions and deeds,
To save humanity by planting these seeds.

A pencil is of dreams,
the Sandman sings sweetly on graphite.
Unlearn your rules,
unleash your light.
Dance on rhythms of pentameter
and sing melodies that twinkle
on the tip of your tongue,
alliterative opera and assonance
played among the bass that is literature.
Sometimes you must ignore the pain
in your hands,
let callouses build and relish
in blood filling your blisters.
Pain here means progress.
Sweep agony away for the sake of day then sink into the ink of night.
Float on clouds of fantasy and write.

You were the greatest neuronal reorganization to ever happen,
of course I don't know who I am anymore.

What was plastic seems changed to stone in a gargoyle brain and beneath a microscope the shimmering glia spell out your name over and over in little green lights, fossilizing the neurons that say:

Him.

The earth has an edge. Nobody wants to fall off.

So call me Homer, because the gods themselves could not convince me my situation's a sphere there's far too much fear in this flattened plane that understands only primitive desires and just wants you near.

Everyone knows the romanced brain could be mistaken for a ******* addict's.

But perhaps if you look more closely into my eyes you will see my irises have turned stormy, that cyclones of energy are becoming patterns that scribble and scribble arcane suggestions for a new cartography. A new story. A new being.

Supplies needed:
One strong pencil.
Enough oxytocin to unlearn an addiction.

Enough optimism to overcome an affliction, my diction is code for the way you kissed me and it underlines every sentence like the way a voice rises when asking a question.

I have so many questions.

And even though the notion of who I will be when I am not you terrifies me, like Cathy and Heathcliff I will not be doomed to roam the moors, already I know there's endlessly more, and with or without you the best is yet to come. Just as they say. No, I don't know what's in store. But I think that's okay.

Turn golden, Grey Matter, light up 'til you burn.

Reboot.
Restart.
Rewire.

*Relearn.